


what is this that i can't see

by More_night



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bi Misunderstandings, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Horror Elements, M/M, Post-Canon, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Victorian Undertones, to live in peace for the rest of their overly tragic bi lives, two naval officers doing their very best
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2020-01-16 00:11:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18509965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: An unforeseen event saves the remaining three dozen men of the crews ofErebusandTerror, when all hope seemed lost. By all appearances, they can now be on their way back home. But what they have disturbed above the Arctic circle does not let Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames go so easily.





	1. June 1848: Francis

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this (1) because I wanted Francis to have some closure for the tuunbaq arc, because I'm fond of monsters (and I was actually extremely sad when Francis killed it), and (2) because I also wanted James and Francis to live a happy life, but apparently, they are very difficult on that point and have a superbly rough time doing that (but they'll get there). It diverges after episode 8. 
> 
> The title is from the lyrics of the folk song Oh Death. I discovered it because the Jen Titus version of the song (for Supernatural) ~~is set to this sweet Tobias Menzies fanvid~~ used to be the soundtrack for a James Fitzjames/Tobias Menzies fanvid, which is down. (Thanks Jonnie!) The song is here: [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXpnI52cLEc).
> 
> Your amazing stories and art have been the delight of my days since this show broke all my emotions in very small pieces; thank you all so much! I hope you enjoy this as much as I'm enjoying writing it!
> 
> [zehstern](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zehstern/profile) made [these stunning covers](https://zehstern.tumblr.com/post/187335839644/cover-art-for-what-is-this-that-i-cant-see-by) for this fic and i still don't know what to do except animal noises about it
> 
> Thanks to Jonnie for help and betaing!

 

* * *

 

 

 

Although it sometimes seems like a waste of ink, Francis Crozier keeps a journal of their progress.

 _Current direction of party is S. S. W. Position unknown. Men on foot: 20,_ he estimates. _Abed: 14. Our last meal exhausted our provisions of salted meats; all left are biscuits, chocolate and tea. Continuing to march southwards to Back's Fish River. Have yet to sight open water._ Francis hesitates at the date. He exhales slowly. How many weeks already since April? Since they have left the ships behind (that was the 22nd), and celebrated Easter on the ice with exceptional full rations (that was on the 23rd)? Since the mutiny? Perhaps he should try backwards. How many days since the last of them, Mr Ridgen, has collapsed, dead on his feet, grey skin taut on his bones? It cannot be more than three, it has to be... He has lost count. With a sigh, he returns to his last entry. But he cannot be certain that this was yesterday. Under the perpetual Arctic sunlight, they have lost sense of morning, day and night. There is now only walking and rest. He writes: _This written on the last day of May, or the first of June._

The canvas of the command tent is worn, threadbare in places. But with the partitioning curtain drawn, the aft section of the tent is dim enough to sleep, yet clear enough to discern his handwriting. Beside him, James still sleeps in his sack and wolfskin.

Francis steps past the curtain, then outside. Mr Hartnell has started a fire and fills a pot with their remaining water for tea. They will drink it then each will eat their share of the bitter, still warm leaves. It won't be much more than a dab, but it is at least something to fill their stomachs.

But this morning will be different.

A well known noise reaches him.

It is a roar. Long, deep and wild.

 

 

 

"All hands! All hands!"

Little's hasty calls are heard and heeded. The men find their guns. Their numbers have dwindled so that half of them now carry weapons; the others seize ice picks and walking sticks in both hands. Their breathing is raspy. They all bear sores. Their eyes are sunken. Most men are in their underclothes, just roused by the alarms. They look less like stranded seamen and more like ailing birds.

Francis directs them to circle the infirmary tent. James is behind him, holding fast to his gun. His overcoat is thrown on his gaunt frame. He blinks in the bright morning light. "Where is he?"

"The cry was east of us!"

The roar comes again. From afar, southeast. Eyes roving, Francis searches the horizon, while Blanky and Little survey the distant ridges with their glasses. "Thomas! Do you see him?" Francis calls.

A roar again. Due south, this time. Some men raise their guns, but there is nothing in sight. Nothing but the pale flatlands and stoneridges.

Nothing moves.

"Thomas! Edward!"

"Don't see nothing, Francis!"

There is another roar then, but not as strong. It is short, and it dwindles into a whimper at the end. Then yet another loud roar. It comes once more from the south and is distinctly different from the previous one.

" _Bloody_ Christ," Little yells, "There's two of them!"

For a long moment, the two roars battle. Until one ends, fraying on a high-pitched note.

Then there is nothing again, but the howls of the wind.

"Weapons down!" Francis calls. Little and Fitzjames echo his order. Some men go to their knees, weakened beyond their strength by the panic and the effort.

Blanky limps up to him. "Reckon it's wounded?" he asks.

Francis shakes his head slowly. Their attention and their eyes are affixed to the far-out point, south-west, where the last cry came from.

Something must have occurred; they all feel it. It is as if the air has just changed.

 

 

 

They decide to send men out.

"We need a small party. Eight men, as quick on their feet as you can find them, Edward. I'll lead them. But we cannot leave the camp here disarmed," Francis says to the remaining officers in the impromptu meeting they hold around the cooling ashes of Mr Hartnell's fire. Francis casts a look at his second-in-command. "James will stay here with the rest of the men. Defend the camp, the supplies and the wounded."

James nods slowly. The lines of his face have become creases. In the bleak light, he is frightfully pale.

"This may be a stratagem by Mr Hickey and his men. If so we need to prepare," Francis says. "But it might just as well not be."

Edward Little exhales. It is hard for Francis to reconcile the tense, apprehensive man before him now, with the strong, obstinate Lieutenant he had first met on _Terror_ in Greenhithe. "What do you think this is, Captain? If it's not another trickery of fate, or hell, then what-..."

"I don't know, Edward. But we owe it to the men to plan for all and proceed in good order. Even now," Francis says. His men are drained of strength -- and so is he. They must perceive his wanness just as much as he does theirs. Because it is all he can do for now, he swallows and he hides it. If they cannot find some spirit in him, they will not find it anywhere else here. He nods at Jopson and Little. "Thomas. Edward. You'll join me on the party. Go get yourselves a shotgun and a pistol."

Jopson grasps Edward's upper arm. It seems to steel him some; he follows him. Francis allows himself a small smile: he had known Jopson's unfaltering loyalty, but to find underneath such prodigality of heart is one of the unwonted gifts this expedition has brought. Then he nods at Le Vesconte and Blanky. "Henry. Thomas. You'll stay here with James. This will be trying for all men here, especially if you come under attack. Keep the spirits high, as much as you can. For your defence-..."

"Francis." Blanky points to the armoury tent outside. "We have - what - ten guns. Some of our injured men can hold a pistol, and we'll still have three of those. If it's Hickey's men, we'll be a decent match, specially if we expect them. And if it's the tuunbaq..." Blanky doesn't finish and shrugs with one shoulder.

James clears his throat. "We still have two kegs of gun powder, yes?"

"With the rest of the armoury supplies."

"We can use it," James explains. "Dispose them up the ridge to the southwest. Draw the creature there. Alight them if he comes."

Blanky huffs and sets his pipe down on his thigh, astounded; yet he speaks with quiet regard. "That's foolhardy. Damn near hazardous in fact," he says. "I like it."

Francis's eyes go from Blanky, whose grin is grim and resolute, to Fitzjames, whose expression is as courteous as if he had just suggested a toast to Sir John Barrow in Erebus's wardroom; then back again. "Absolutely not."

James seems to gather strength before speaking. "If the creature seeks us out here, Francis, he will go through fifteen weak men and a dozen of injured as placidly as a knife cuts the air. Might as well take a fair chance of hurting him."

"Blow it to the damned skies," Blanky approves.

Inside, dither pulls at Francis. James's unwavering gaze meets his and Francis sees all of it, unwinding; a man who has never been anything at all and known it in every fibre of his being and every moment of his life; a man who would rather be celebrated as a hero, risking death at every turn, rather than remain hidden from sight, fearing obscurity just as much as he fears being truly brought to daylight.

He nods at Blanky and Le Vesconte to leave them alone.

Once he is confident they will not hear him, he steps closer and tells James, "Take off your gloves." James seems serene; exhausted until the very depths of his soul, but peaceful; he does not move. "It's an order," Francis adds, although he has never uttered these words so softly. He incongruously follows them up with, "Please."

James slides his gun off his shoulder, lips tightening in pain at the process. Then he pulls his right glove off, breathing harshly. The skin underneath is reddened with open wounds and lined with encrusted blood. In Francis's recollection, these marks are those left by the frostbite James had received on one of his treks to and from _Erebus_ in the dead cold of their last winter.

Earnestly this time, Francis studies James; he has often done so, attempting to monitor the progress of the scurvy, but he could never quite do it at his leisure. His second lets him, gazing back equably. James's hair is plastered with sweat and his skin covered in the pale dust that their steps draw from the shale. Blotches of red decorate his cheekbones, his hairline, the receding skin under his jaw. The many layers he wears do not conceal the brittleness of his shoulders. "You can barely stand," Francis concludes, with an incredulous smile.

James smiles weakly back. "I am a creature of pride, Francis."

Francis's hands twitch at his sides. He places them on James's shoulders.

"We both know I will not again see the shores of England. Let me do this," James asks in a whisper.

Francis tightens his fingers. "Dispose the powder kegs," he relents. He pulls on a lapel of James's coat, forcibly keeping his voice from breaking. "But make sure to detonate them from _afar_."

"Captain!" Little calls from outside. "Party's ready."

With a last press of his fingers to James's arm, and with the formidably hollow feeling gnawing at him, that he may never lay eyes on him alive again, he walks out.

 

 

 

They do not have to walk far. It is not quite a mile from their camp that they find the kill.

It is a white bear. Its large neck was broken and its head twisted back. It seems as though it had been as easy as to snap a twig. The bear's fur is pristine, unstained with blood.

Francis keeps his shotgun at the ready, wary. Thoughts assail him of what may have happened here. All these thoughts feature the creature. The tuunbaq must have been interrupted: it is not like him to leave a body alone. Francis's eyes go to the horizon, where their camp is. Nothing arises; no gunfire; not even a shout that the wind would bring to their ears. He examines the dead beast again. There is nothing else to it than a slaughtered bear.

He circles the body cautiously. "Jopson, keep watching the southwest. Mr. Hartnell, keep an eye on the north. He has baited us before. Let us not be fooled again."

The men move closer to the bear. As silent minutes pass, their fright and hesitation leaves them. And it becomes clear to them now what this is, even though they do not understand how it came to be.

This is meat.

The kill is so fresh that from the bear's mouth, where the tongue hangs out, a mist rises in the cool air. The more Francis looks at the bear, the less he understands, even though he knows it too, in his chest, in his mouth, that this is food. Food for thirty starving men. For a week if they use it well. And they will.

But this does not ease Francis's worry. This kill is not like the ones of the creature they have seen. The tuunbaq shreds, disembowels and tears. He pieces his victims back together to put terror in the heart of those watching. But no one is watching now, and the tuunbaq is nowhere.

Yet he has done this. Francis knows it as intimately as he knows his own name.

At last, he returns his gun to his shoulder. "This doesn't look like a fight," he says.

"What then, sir?"

"There was no brawl. This was an execution." Francis exhales slowly. "But why?"

Francis's eyes go back to the dots of their camp's tents in the distance. If the creature had wanted to attack and decimate them, why split them apart? He had killed thirty of them by rampaging through a camp of nearly one hundred men who were healthier and stronger than they are now. To frighten them, bait them out here, give them hope only to crush it? Then where was he? The more Francis thinks of an ambush, the more he feels that something is amiss. There is something gnawing at his chest, not quite fear, but something else. It is very much like the knotted certainty that they should never have come here - he had felt it since their first winter at Beechey. But it pulses now, as if it were trying to squash his heart.

Could it be Hickey and his men - somehow? But that would not account for the roars. Could it-...

"Captain," Jopson calls out.

Francis takes the glass Jopson offers and aligns it with the Lieutenant's finger, pointed at the horizon.

There are two figures on the top of a ridge north of them.

One of them he sees clearly.

It is Lady Silence. Her hood is pushed over her head. She stares at... Francis blinks. If he didn't know better - because no-one, Netsilik or not, can see this far - he would say she stares at them. At _him_ , in fact. From where she stands, more than half a mile northeast of them.

The second figure stays behind her, partly hidden by the ridge. Francis sees a fur parka, but the silhouette is too slim and too tall to be that of a Netsilik. Silence stares for a moment, not unkindly, studying them as tranquilly as she did clouds or sea ice, then turns away. Both figures soon retreat over the ridge, walking back north.

"Captain?" Jopson asks.

Francis lowers the glass. His perplexed brow tells too much to the assembled men. They need his courage, they need his words. He straightens his face, hoping with all soul he has left that this chance is not only dangled before their eyes.

"Put your weapons away," Francis says. "This is an offering."

All is still on the rocks of the island. The wind blows strong and carries with it a nagging snow.

 

 

 

It takes them most of the day to haul the bear back to camp on a sledge. The men there cannot believe their eyes.

They have scarcely begun to remove the layers of fur and fat on the bear's back that some men cannot help themselves; they press closer. It takes all the power Francis's authority lends him to convince them to wait and remain in order.

In the end, they do wait. But when they eat their share raw, Francis lets them. Some of them cry when the smell of grilled meat spreads.

Mr Bridgens insists that they eat small rations, no bigger than the size of a man's palm. Not to preserve the food, but because starved men can die from having their bellies too full.

The men eat guardedly in groups around the fire. There is relish in their eyes; more than comfort, it is something like grace that he glimpses on some faces. But others are deserted of all human expression, and the hands of these men bring meat to their lips impassively. Some look at him like he has brought this to them with his own bare hands. Francis cannot reject their devotion, not now. Even if he likely deserves little of it.

Once he has eaten his share, even though his belly churns still, he gets to his feet. He moves among them, counting the assembled officers and crew.

He sees James nowhere.

 

 

 

Francis finds him, sitting on a crate in the infirmary tent, haggard. Bridgens is with him.

"John, what's happened?" Francis asks, fearing something may have gone wrong after all in camp during their absence.

"His throat has swollen, sir. I have never seen this, I cannot speak to it."

James nods at the metal plate of cooked meat Bridgens has brought him. "I can't..." He licks his lips. He plainly struggles to talk. "I can't swallow. It's food and I can't..."

Francis crouches on the ground by James's side. James reaches for his hand and Francis takes hold of it.

It is a wonder, he thinks, that his voice comes in a stunningly calm tone, while, within, it feels like some great beast roaming in his chest. "Mr Bridgens, go to the main tent. Bring the jug I asked Mr Seeley to put aside. Then help yourself to some food if you haven't."

While Bridgens goes, Francis sets the plate aside. He has already had his own share, yet his stomach rumbles for more. He knows to ignore it for now. "Not too disheartened you didn't get to blow anything up, I hope?" he chides. It is the only thing he can do to keep the tears from prickling at his eyes, although he is certain that James sees through the manoeuvre.

It costs James an effort to form a smile in answer. Francis squeezes his fingers to quell the need. After a moment, James says, his tone graver than his meaning, "A singular story, it would have been."

"I disagree."

"You are a most difficult audience, Francis. I will have to find something else to impress you."

Bridgens returns promptly with the jug. Francis settles by a crate to tip the contents in a cup.

James winces. The liquid Francis has poured is dark in colour and an uncanny coppery smell comes from it. "What is it?"

"Blood." Francis sits on the cot by James's side. "You are going to drink of it."

James's eyes are skeptical, but rather desperate.

Francis looks down at the cup. In the dim sunlight filtering through the Holland tent, it looks as black as coffee. Francis says, "In 1822, the _Fury_ and _Hecla_ were frozen in at Winter Island. A Netsilik group had settled near us. We discovered some of them to be ailing. We helped them. There was an old woman, in particular, whom I carried on my back from her snowhouse to our sickbay on the beach." Francis recalls the trek over the ice as he speaks. It was snowing, not a storm, but enough to prick his face as he walked. The woman was so slight, he thought then that her furs must have weighed more than herself. "She was very ill. But nothing we gave her helped. A Netsilik healer visited her the next day. He brought her the blood of a white bear in an ivory flask."

"Did she live?"

"She died the spring next, in her sleep," Francis says. "To the natives, blood is much more potent against scurvy than broth or lemon juice, but I must warn you. To an Englishman, the taste is bound to be quite foul."

James closes his eyes and breathes out, fanning his cheeks. The he gives Francis a short nod.

"Tilt your head back," Francis instructs. He holds the back of James's head and brings the cup to his lips.

The bear's blood must be unpalatable indeed if James's twisting lips provide any indication. Francis watches anxiously. James pauses after drinking half the cup. His lips are smeared in a very bright red; he wipes it away. Then he nods to the cup in Francis's hand. "The rest of it, then?"

 

 

 

Leaving his Lieutenants to organize the night's watches, at least one of which will guard the meat, Francis returns to the infirmary tent and stays with James until he sleeps, despite James's protests. In men this sick and this starved, Francis knows that eating can weaken rather than save. Some part of him does hope it would force James to remain abed, so that he may heal. Walk again without his step faltering every few yards. Smile again without it costing him.

James lies shakily down on the cot in his many layers of clothing, excepting only his overcoat. Francis does not know if it is because he is cold, or because he will not be able to dress himself again come morning. He does not ask and simply pulls the blankets tightly over him.

As soon as his eyes shut, James sleeps. His breathing is deep and fast, like a runner's. At odd times, a spasm seizes his body and he shudders.

This is what troubles Francis most.  
  
Francis takes his journal from his coat and writes. _Party has settled to camp. Position unknown, but we will soon near the southern shore of King William Land. Men on foot: 19. Men abed..._ He lifts the pen from the page and eyes the bed. Then writes: _15, including an officer. Sometime past 9 of this morning, a white bear was killed._ He leaves it at that. It is, after all, all he does know and he does not want the Admiralty to inquire into his suppositions; they will make their own alright. _It will provide meat and fur. Rations of meat will last, I hope, ten days for the party whole. Men suffer from exhaustion, hunger, scurvy and other maladies. Tomorrow, we will resume marching south._

 

 

 

The first dream he dreams that night.

It is unlike any other dream he has ever had; unlike all the shaky visions left in him overnight by whiskey; unlike too the colourful, enchanting fantasies he dreamed as a boy.

Francis finds himself again in _Terror_ 's great cabin. The wood of the boat creaks around him. But things are not quite as they should be aboard _Terror_. For he has never felt so much at peace here, he has never felt so safe, and, he notes while becoming certain, finally, that this is indeed a dream: he has never been in this cabin so warm since they have entered Baffin Bay, three years prior.

Lady Silence is with him, in what he thinks of as her usual place, seated on a chair by the suspended table. Her face is blank and proud with calm defiance.

 _Do you still want to die?_ she asks him. Her voice does not come from her lips. And he hears them not with his ears, but in his mind, similar to how he would discourse with himself in the privacy of his own thoughts. It is not a great shock to him; not after all they have seen and done here.

"I will do my best to save my men. To return them home. Our home."

She does not smile, but her face softens. Yet, she does not need words to tell him he has not answered her question.

"I want to save..." Francis's voice breaks, as if he cannot bear saying it. "As many as I can. Can I still do that?"

He cannot read Silence's face; he is certain this was not the answer she awaited. This feels much like a trial. He wants to say that he knows he is guilty, if it still could change anything. But he doesn't know whether his words would change anything. Or whether his men will remain lost somewhere unknown, on the wind-travelled shale.

Outside the ship, a vast, low rumbling is heard. The noise is regular; what must be a terrifyingly large paw lands on the main deck, then another, then another; the beast steps forward. It comes closer, approaching low and careful; it moves aft and reaches the stern. Francis hears it slipping over the gunwale. Francis doesn't believe it; he doesn't until the creature, whose face is in an unutterable way not quite the one of a bear, stares at Francis through the window panes.

A chill goes through him. But his arms, his legs, and all of him is frozen through, like the ships; trapped. The creature looks at him, then roars loudly. There are words in his head again; not Silence's this time. Spoken from some ancient place. _You cannot die. Tuunbaq cannot die._

 

 

 

The next morning finds his men better.

Francis has left James asleep and called a command meeting. His officers and he eat one more share of grilled bear meat as breakfast, sitting on wooden crates that feel like the most comfortable settees of the richest London salon, talking in light-minded tones that Francis has not heard in months of things that would seem mundane to an unknowing ear, but carries all the meaning of the world for them. ("It tastes like fish." "But the redness of the meat is odd." "I heard caribou was like so as well." "Will we hunt caribou, you think?")

Their meal is small and it leaves all their stomachs still empty, but something like hope has reappeared in their hearts and it fills them more than food ever would. Yet they have to tread carefully now. What matters is to nurture this and keep it alive with the little, still very little, means at their disposal. Francis Crozier has never liked relying on hope. For hope is like a tall wave, one that drags deep and cants ship until the sails stroke the water; the climb on the wave is exhilarating, like taking flight; but then you reach the crest; the fall begins; and once you have reached the trough, the wave collapses and swallows you.

"Who killed that bear, Captain?" Le Vesconte asks.

Francis knew the question would come. He hardly sees how it would not be on every man's mind. "We have not found a trace of a wound on its body, nor of a pellet in its flesh so far," he says, crossing his hands before him. "The creature," he grants finally. "Or another bear," he tempers. "Which must have left the kill behind. I cannot understand the reasons behind it. I do not understand much in truth of what has happened to us this far."

"This means the creature's still pursuing us," Edward says.

"It means it is only more urgent to press forward, especially now that we finally can." Francis says: "He might just let us go if we leave King William Land." He barely knows where these words have come from; they surface in his mind effortlessly, as some plain truth, as old as the earth.

Scanning the faces around him, Francis sees some fear, yes, but less than he had thought; his officers seem determined, Jopson and Le Vesconte have risen; there is much to be done and packing must begin quickly now, if they want to attempt three miles in what is left of their men's waking hours.

But there is still one more thing.

"James, you have noticed, is not here this morning," he says. "The scurvy has worsened in him in the past days."

"Blood didn't help?" Blanky asks.

"Too little," Francis says. He leaves out his private, devouring fear, that it might be too little, too late. "And he must imperatively rest." Francis stops briefly, afraid of how much of his worry will show. "Edward, for all practical purposes from now on, you will be my acting second. Until James recuperates."

Edward gives a short bow.

"Francis," Blanky says. "Does the Commander know about that?"

"Not yet," Francis admits.

 

 

 

The men ready the sledges while Francis walks to the infirmary tent. Passing by Bridgens who stores clinking bottles in the smaller medicine chest they have left, he finds James in the process of rising.

James is slow at it; has managed to get on one elbow and slides to a seated position, his right hand holding his left side. He sees Francis too late to have the proper time to hide the pained grimace on his face. But once he does, he quickly straightens his body and face both. Francis averts his gaze, as if he was witnessing a most private thing. As if he has just seen a raw wound exposed, then hurriedly covered.

"We continue south?" James asks. His voice is still rough. But his skin, Francis notices, seems less pale than yesterday.

Francis nods silently, his fingers tracing the black band of his hat as he takes it off. He leans into a crouch and puts a hand on James's shoulder with some strength, until it becomes clear that he is pressing him to sit back down. "We will settle you in one of the sledges. You cannot keep walking. Much less haul."

"Nonsense."

"I have asked Edward to be my acting second, as of this morning."

James pushes Francis's hand away. "What?"

"I am relieving you of your duty. You must rest."

"Oh, bugger you and your orders, Francis."

James's words do not carry any bite, although his eyes are aflame; but he must have grown desperate to resort to such transparent tactics.

How far they have come, Francis ponders, from their first, short meeting in Greenhithe, when Francis Crozier had his mind still filled with Italy and Sophia, with the prospect only of a bitter voyage confining him on _Terror_ as if in a prison - a prison designed by his own foolish wishes at that. What a strange, disgruntled man he was, then, Francis thinks. And James. James was healthy, looking boastful and young ("in over his head, confident and contrived - a Royal Navy officer as true as they come", Francis recalls having thought then). Now, James is dying and Francis Crozier curses himself for seeing only now, now that scurvy, poison and hunger have stripped all from him, the man James Fitzjames is. "I came on this voyage wanting from it what it couldn't yield to me. Then, I expected nothing from it. Nothing from the world. I thought myself abandoned, forsaken among peculiar men and on an aberrant journey. Yet the one thing I _have_ found here is your friendship. You will see England again. We both will. But you _must_ rest."

Francis has grasped James's hand as strongly as he feels he safely can. The eyes James lift to him now are free of all bravado. Never before has Francis glimpsed such honesty, condensed in a dark pupil. The Arctic is gone, and their abandoned ships, and their march south. "I cannot bear the thought of being a burden. Not for the men. Not for you."

"I am aware of what I ask of you. I ask it because I want you to live."

"Live..." James repeats, like the sound is unfamiliar. He closes his eyes next and Francis feels something within him give, as tangibly as young ice does when it parts before the bow of a ship. James's shoulders drop. A tear forms at the corner of his eye. In the battle between body and will, the body has vanquished for now. James taps his fist dully on the mattress. "Christ. An _intractable_ man you are."

"True," Francis says softly, finally letting out the breath he has been holding.

"Three days," James offers. "I will rest for three days."

"Three days."

"Not one more."

 

 

 

When they stop to rest, Francis dreams again. It crowds his eyelids as soon as he shuts them. It does not feel like it comes from his own mind at all.

He finds himself in _Terror_ 's great cabin. Lady Silence is here with him, as is Harry Goodsir. Dr Goodsir wears a full beard, he is thinner, but that is not the thing that Francis sees most. Goodsir's eyes are different, hardened with resolve.

 _The bear will not be enough_ , Silence says.

"No," Francis says. "But it will last some time. I have you to thank for it. I know."

Silence shakes her head slowly. _He does not want your gratitude_.

"Tuunbaq? What does he want then?"

Silence's gaze is uncertain.

Goodsir answers, his voice is quiet and bearing the same resolve as his stare. "Leave. Go south," he says. "As quickly as you can, Captain. His patience is thin."

 

 

 

Two days later, Tom Hartnell, of a party sent out west over the ice, returns with a caribou calf thrown on his shoulder. The men cheer around him like he has found the Northwest passage on his own. But when he reaches the officers, he lets his bafflement show.

"It was dead, Captain, when I saw it. Not a wound on it."

"A caribou? On the ice?"

Hartnell nods.

Blanky rises from the crate where he sits to examine the body. It is a calf, but it is still three days of meat, most feasibly. "Clean kill. Neck was broken. Same as the bear." He touches it and huffs. "Still warm too."

Francis lays a hand on Hartnell's shoulder. "Did the men think this was your kill?"

"They didn't ask, sir."

Francis nods. "If they do - _when_ they do - say that it was."

 

 

 

Later that night, the men have been fed. Again. They talk amongst themselves. The distance of rank has mostly evaporated now and they don't lower their voices when an officer comes near. Some of them speak of luck--of how providential this is, of how they have deserved it. Some of them have other ideas, which they share in hushed tones. It doesn't surprise Francis; sailors are woven through with superstitions. What should one expect of men whose only work and purpose are found on a ship, but who are never taught to swim?

 

 

 

He smokes in silence outside under the stars with Blanky. "What's happening, you think?"

Francis puffs and weighs his words. "Not the dimmest idea."

"You'll have to find something to tell the men. Eventually."

"Tell them what? The creature has hunted us... And now it's feeding us?"

Blanky snorts.

 

 

 

He has stopped counting the dreams. They are there not only when he sleeps, but whenever he rests his eyes. It is as if there are only two places in the world he can be now: out here, on these rocky plains; or in _Terror'_ s great cabin, with Silence's words in his head.

 

 

 

There are limits to Francis's powers of persuasion: it takes Thomas Blanky's insistence to convince James to remain in a sledged boat for seven more days.

During this short time, drinking broth and marrow, then eating chunks of raw meat, slowly, but steadily, he gets better. Sores still adorn his brow; his lips are chafed; his breath comes awfully short. But his wounds are closing. His gaze is firm again.

When James maintains that he can safely walk, Bridgens assists him with his first attempt. Francis smokes his pipe at a distance, observant. James's slender legs have become frail with illness, and weak from his rest. Watching him walk again is like watching a newborn fawn. James struggles to push himself upright on slim, trembling limbs.

More than the meat they find, more... more than the dreams he has, it is seeing James upright again that assures Francis they could, perhaps, survive.

James looks up at Francis.

Francis cannot recall when he has seen him this pleased. And, in fact, he cannot himself recall any such joy.

 

 

 

They reach the southern shore of King William Land that very day. There is no build-up of ice on the shore, a sign that warmer temperatures are approaching. They happen on new ice that they melt to drink and cook. The bridge of ice that leads them inland is thin. It is covered in water, where the surface of the ice has begun to melt; soon the melt will open cracks; cracks will become leads. But not yet, not for many weeks yet, and then it will almost be August, and the leads will close again. What fools they were, Francis thinks, to have conceived they could sail through this land.

Francis finds Blanky surveying the horizon east of them. He hands Francis the glass. "Here. Point it thereabouts, east-southeast."

"The clouds?"  
  
Blanky hums. "See that dark hue at the bottom?"

Francis sees it. It is a long stretch of grey reflected on clouds hovering low. "Open water..." he realizes.

"My impression also."

Francis lowers the glass. "The passage."

Blanky chews on his pipe, a triumphant, exhilarated grin on his face. "Aye. The cursed thing."

Raising the glass again, Francis stares once more. Blanky is right. There is open water there; it is not a wide way, but it must be sailable.

It must not be irony, not quite. Or else, some wide-mouthed, gaping irony. That they find it now. With two thirds of the men dead or lost with Hickey and Tozer. With the ships in the ice. With the rest of them having more wounds on them than skin.

Francis collapses the glass.

He decides it there, under the plain open sky. No matter what happens next, he will never again be a Royal Navy man.

 

 

 

Once on the firm ground of the peninsula, they encamp. The scenery has not changed: they are surrounded by shale fields, ridged and hilly, like an arrested sea of stone. But the first water party finds a streamlet less than a mile south. Jopson reports that they have also seen lichen and some chucked bushes sprouting in between rocks. They are still hundreds of miles above the treeline, but this is drinking and cooking water, and plants, and life.

As Jopson finishes his report, Francis runs his hands over his face.

"What is it, Captain?"

Like all they have lived and known here, it is difficult to find words for the thoughts in his mind. As if yet undiscovered lands brought with them uncharted motions of the soul. "I think... I think we might make it."

"I never doubted you, sir."  
  
Francis does not - cannot - say, _I did_.

"You have not encountered game, have you?"

"No, sir. But Henry Peglar has identified some tracks."

"A bear?"

"They were too small. But numerous. I thought caribou. Maybe we scared them off when we approached." Then Jopson asks, ever perceptive. "You think _he_ 's done with us?"

Francis clenches and unclenches his jaw. "No." Then, "We'll tell the hunting parties to conceal their advance as best they can, so as not to scare prey."

Jopson nods and is about to make his way out when he pauses. He removes his hat. Like most of them, his cheeks have some colour again and the sores on his brow have begun to recede. "Captain," he says. "If I may, you look exhausted, sir. I would advise you to rest some."

His former steward is right: Francis has taken the first three watches since they arrived here, shortly after dawn. He has patrolled the farthest north from their camp, his shotgun at his side. Stopping at the shore, he has stared at the other side, distant over the ice bridge. He has not seen anything, neither the creature, nor Lady Silence or her mysterious companion. "I will, Thomas. Thank you."

 

 

 

He had hoped to exhaust his mind enough that his sleep may be peaceful. He settles himself on the cold mattress. James is asleep at his side, his arm is thrown over his eyes to shield them from the sun, his elbow casting an angular line through the worn sweater. James's recovery is slow, still, even if Francis knows just how close he - and they all - came, and Francis is tempted often to stop their progress and let them all rest. But what happens when they stop? Does Tuunbaq find them again? Like - Francis has grown sure of it now - he has found Hickey and his men...

He lies down.

He is in _Terror_ 's great cabin again. Things are not the same as they were in the last dreams. Lady Silence is there with Harry Goodsir, yes. But she wears her fur parka, much too warm for the heated inside of the ship. Both of them are nervous.

When Francis begins to talk, she puts her hand over her mouth, showing him not to speak. Francis does not understand. He knew she was frightened of the creature, but this time her fear shows on her brow.

Then heavy steps come from behind them. Francis freezes.

They do not come from the deck above. The creature is inside the ship. Wood cracks then gives. Strong paws drag claws over planks. _Terror_ rumbles as the creature advances within, forcing his way through.

"He's coming here," Francis whispers.

 _He has grown curious about you_ , Silence thinks in his head. Francis turns to her, stopped short at her words. _I have tried to stop it, but you he wants_.

"What should he want with me? To kill me?"

Silence shakes her head. _He wants your..._ anirniq.

"My... spirit?"

"Your soul, we Englishmen would say," Goodsir says.

"Wh..." Francis tries to ask, but the thundering noise of the creature advancing through wood grows closer and closer.

The creature's breath drifts through the open door like a warm wind. It smells of cracking ice and sea. Silence and Goodsir are petrified. The creature slips in a paw, then a shoulder, bigger than a man's body. The door frame splinters. Next comes the head, placed on a large thick neck. Francis is not as terrified as he would have imagined. The way it must be in dreams, he thinks.

Most of the tuunbaq has the appearance of a bear but for the head. It has distorted human features: the ears are curved and set on the head as on a man's, the lips are gnarled under a nose like a dog's - but the eyes... The eyes, of a dark blue, are not at all like a bear's.

It reminds Francis of his very first time setting sight upon the sea. As a boy, vacationing in Bangor Bay with his father, the sea so impenetrable and dark he had seen it then to be his world.

Of the sight of dark blue sky receding before the rising sun, after their sojourn in Antarctic darkness.

Of a lead opening - the last one they had ever seen - before the bow of _Terror_.

Of the deep blue silk cravat he has seen James wear only once. On the day of his birthday in July 1846, in _Erebus_ 's wardroom.

"Francis."

 

 

 

Francis wakes at the shake of his shoulder and the call of his name.

"Francis." James, partly out of his own sack and blankets, in his fraying sweater, hair astray, his eyes deep-set, is waking him. "You were dreaming," he says.

Francis realizes his breathing comes hard and shallow. He is taut, as if he had been fighting and bracing for a hit. He unclenches his fist and his fingers hurt. "Did I speak?"

James swallows dry. The question seems more concerning to him than Francis would have thought. "Yes."

"What did I say?"

"I didn't comprehend it. You... you spoke in the Esquimau tongue."

Francis runs a hand over his eyes. They feel as dry and rough as if he had not had a minute of sleep whole.

"Are you well?"

"I don't..." He stops midword. "Did you hear that?"

James lifts his head. For a moment, there is nothing outside, but the distant sound of a rock hammered on a tent peg.

"Hear wh-...?"

Francis hushes him. He listens again, perched on one elbow, and blessedly, when the sound comes again, James hears it also.

"Lord Christ," he says.

They get to their feet, scrambling out of their bedding.

Outside, the men have heard it too.

It is the sound, unmistakable in the Arctic barrens, of dogs barking.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The young-Francis-carrying-an-old-Netsilik-woman-on-his-back anecdote is likely true (it's from Fluhmann 1976; I have yet to read Smith's 2006 book). The bear-blood-as-antiscorbutic part is not; although it must have helped some. According to [this paper](http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic32-2-135.pdf?level=1), it's beluga skin and ring seal liver which containing high levels of vitamin C, preserved Netsilik Inuit from scurvy and related immune system conditions.
> 
> 2\. In the show, they make Blanky identify the Northwest passage as some spot of openish water to the south-west of King William 'Land' on his map. I hadn't noticed that, wrote it being the eastern strait (which confirms King William Land is King William Island), and then I went blueh and left it so.
> 
> 3\. (Blanky and James are the ultimate reckless bravery team. No one will change my mind. Blanky: we'll welcome the creature guns ablazing and die a noble warrior's death. James: hold my beer.)
> 
> 4\. Francis can be read as psychic!Francis or as ptsd!Francis. I didn't have a particular headcannon in mind on that point, and I'm afraid watching too much Hannibal has dissolved my idea of a distinction between the symbolic and the mental.


	2. June and July 1848: James

 

* * *

 

 

 

His mind-image of their expedition to the Northwest passage still lives in his eye, like Singapore shadow-puppets dancing on a canvas screen. Sailing out of Greenhithe, it was glory, éclat and victory that made up most of his imaginings of their expedition.

It is odd to recall it now. 1847 had come, bringing the creature and death instead of a thaw.

But truly it had taken Francis's illness and recovery. The New Year 1848. The costumes. The fire.

Only then had James commenced to see that none of their deeds would end in victory, but that perhaps there could be survival, or perhaps, God-willing, a rescue. It was still a tale of bravery, then, that he recounted to himself. The men's continued efforts in their march south. Their obstinate resistance to illness. Francis's self-possessed, solid leadership; their boat on a sea rougher than they could fathom.

Since then, he has had many visions of rescue, sometimes when he slept, sometimes when he walked. _Over this ridge, just next,_ he has thought, _a camp waits for us. Warm food and stoked stoves, and clean linens, and water enough to shave and wash_. _One more step. One more step._ A gaze at Francis, at his left, always. A gaze up at the horizon, faraway, always. _One more step._

But whatever his visions of a rescue had been, it is not quite what happens when the relief expedition of Sir John Richardson and Dr John Rae finds them, one fateful morning in the middle of June 1848.

 

 

 

Over a full year after Sir John died. So much has changed that it feels longer to him; something like a lifetime. Is he so altered?

It takes Francis's kind smile, lingering on his lips, for James to realize he is crying.

 

 

 

The relief expedition numbers sixteen men, Natives and voyagers from Canada, with the two leaders, and eight dogs, taut and light like wolves, to haul their sledges; these are made in the Esquimaux fashion with wood so thin it seems flimsy to James compared to the boats they pull. The expedition's orders are issued by the British Royal Navy, but their crew is hired by the Hudson's Bay Company. Richardson's and Rae's men are thin and stern; but, compared to the remaining crew of what is still, dazzlingly, called in England the Franklin expedition, they are as healthy as they can be.

Sir John Richardson is a tall and slim man, oddly well-spoken for someone whose deep voice comes from under a large fur hood. He is calm and controls his men well, although he cannot truly rely on rank to do so. John Rae is a surgeon. He is of a thick build and scarcely voices a word ever. When he does speak, his meaning seems to have been pondered at length. The Natives consider him one of their own. Altogether, buried in clothes mixing worn wool and fur, the relief party appears less like an expedition of Englishmen and more like they have sprouted from the rocks themselves, as the Esquimaux do, a mirage of dust and stone. They have left England in March and have sailed the rivers and lakes of the Arctic fur trade route up, first to Great Slave Lake, then up the Mackenzie River. (Precisely where Sir John, James recalls had himself nearly perished in ordeals unmentionable.) Then they trudged east along the northernmost coast of the mainland, subsisting in the Native way, fishing, hunting, surviving.

It is unclear what the party was expected to find. Bodies, perhaps. It has been three years after all, even if that period must have seemed shorter in London than here.

Once rejoicings have passed, Richardson and Rae speak with Francis and himself. Their faces are strained and they keep their voices low, although they have walked some fifty yards from their camp to confer.

"Is that all those left?"

Francis hesitates, thinking no doubt of Mr Hickey. For some time now, through half-voiced words, James has known him to suspect the creature has devoured those men, but it is a more civilized truth that Francis tells Richardson and Rae. "There may be others. Some of the men became mutinous. They formed their own party, taking some unwilling men with them. We haven't encountered them in weeks now. They may well have returned to the ships north of King William Island."

Just as it does in James, the wound left by the mutiny and the men lost to it must still bleed in Francis. But it does not seem to stay long on Richardson's and Rae's minds.

"Thus thirty-four in total?" Richardson says.

"Makes over fifty men, with us two and our voyagers," Rae adds.

Richardson's brow is furrowed with something that cannot bide well.

"Sir Richardson, Dr Rae, what is your worry?" Francis asks, finally, ever practical.

Rae's mouth twists underneath his abundant beard. "This land isn't one fashioned to nourish this many men. They are too loud, too numerous. It bewilders me by what divine luck you have managed to hunt anything at all."

Francis stills slightly, but it must be entirely invisible to those who are not as familiar with his demeanour as James has become. "We've had some luck, yes," he understates softly. "Are you telling us it has run out?"

"We will not leave you and your men here," Sir Richardson assures quickly.

"Then _what_ are you saying?" James says. It comes out a bit more curtly than he has anticipated, but they are well beyond curtseys.

Richardson's expression softens. Perhaps he does understand that James and Francis are, and have now for a long time been, outworn by the combined weight of command and survival. "You and your men should rest for tonight. Dr Rae and I will discuss and we'll reconvene tomorrow."

 

 

 

Tomorrow brings no consolation. 

"Forget Back's Fish River."

"Pardon?" James blurts.

Francis is blinking incredulously. "Sir Richardson, Dr Rae. These men cannot walk back the way you came along the northern shore. The mere notion of that effort will take away the little strength left in them."

"There is a hundred and fifty miles yet to the mouth of Back's River," Rae says. "Your men are too weakened. If they keep hauling, they will die."

"What else would you have us do?" Francis says, in tight resignation.

For all his imaginative resources, James does not see what else they could possibly do. Where to store their supplies if not in the boats? Where to shelter the injured during gales? These boats, despite their weight, have become their home now in many ways. When Richardson and Rae do not reply, James says, "If we cannot promise the men that we will sail when reaching Back's River, they may stop walking then and there."

"Dr Rae is right," Richardson says.

"What are we to do then? Walk north the way we came? Back to the ships?" 

"Not north. Due east," Rae says. "Until we hit Repulse Bay. Drop the boats, here. Fashion lighter sledges with the wood." He points at their position on the map spread before them on a crate. They are just barely south of King William Island. The stretch of land between them and Repulse Bay is distressingly long. James hangs his head: the two other men - their saviours - may still save them, but at what cost to their men?

Beside him Francis is pensive. Brittle. He waits, eyes fixed on Rae, whose resolution is clear.

Rae speaks again. His tone is blunt, but not without kindness as if he knows he is shattering the last of their hopes. "Back's Fish River numbers seventeen portages, some of them more than a thousand paces in length. These boats have served you well I'm sure, but your men will not carry them on their backs over rocky cliffs."

It sinks in. Francis's shoulders slump, James understands that Rae is right. There have been so many occasions now when he felt the ground open wide under his feet - the tins, the creature and the menacing, mysteriously slaughtered game - he supposes he should have grown used to it. But still, despair twists his visions and hopes into fatuous dreams; of course, Dr Rae is right. Even when they were stronger and did not have a two-month march in their legs, it had taken every atom of strength they had to carry the boats over a handful of ice ridges. The ridges were higher than the portages would be, but it was unthinkable that they should walk a thousand paces with these boats. If there had not been the scurvy, nor the poisoned food. Perhaps.

"I need a moment of counsel with Captain Fitzjames," Francis says, after a moment.

The two men of the relief expedition nod. Slipping pipes out of some hidden pockets in their fur-lined greatcoats, they walk out of the tent.

He and Francis lean over the map. It is the only one they have left. The top right corner was burnt when the command tent was set on fire the day of the attack and mutiny. This is where the northwestern shore of Hudson's Bay would be, precisely where they would be headed. In place of Repulse Bay, there is nothing. Their new goal - if it is to be so - had turned to ashes before the march even began.

"It's 400 miles to Repulse Bay, Francis," he says. "Can we make it before September?"

" _Only_ if we drop the boats. Then we can make ten miles a day," Francis ponders. "But it is not what concerns me most."

"Then what?"

"Tuunbaq."

"The creature? What is to fear from him if he has provided us food?" James asks. He had not believed it at first, and a part of him still does not appreciate the thought, even though Francis had been quietly adamant.

"I would rather we get south of the Arctic circle," Francis confides.

"Out of his... territory?"

Francis nods silently. Since they have found the bear, Francis's gravity, in an oddly misplaced reminder of their early years on the voyage, has again been accompanied with guardedness.

"Not a word of the creature to Sir Richardson and Dr Rae?" James assumes.

Francis shakes his head gently. Then he sighs and runs his hands over his eyes, as he does when he is burdened. There is no more talk of the creature after that. They must speak of how to prepare their men for what is coming. There is no telling what it will do to their spirits.

 

 

 

Because they need to proceed quickly, the men must be told immediately. If they can indeed walk ten miles a day, even though it will be an effort for men as drained as they are, they would reach Repulse Bay in August. In London, August is damp and warm; in the Arctic, it is all but winter.

The men gather in a circle around Francis. Some of them have lost skin, fingers, toes here. Some have lost more - friends, family - and Francis is about to ask them to lose yet something else: their shelter now, and the very last remnants of their lives as sailors.

James surveys the assembled crowd. The sun is high, as ever; it does not give them life, but burns their eyes. Francis takes his rifle off his shoulder and entrusts it with James. For a moment, as their eyes nearly meet over the weapon, Francis's gaze flits vaguely to the northwest above James's shoulder. The shift is brief but conspicuous enough that James turns to look for the object it seeks.

There is nothing there that James can see. There is in fact only the land of shale, with no soul on it at all. Yet, certainty arises in James, slowly and strangely, that something watches; the sentiment is ponderable enough that it requires an effort to turn back towards the men, as Francis begins to talk.

"Men, I cannot say that this is the last I will ask of you, for I know not what the future brings. But there is something to be asked now."

Francis speaks of how proud he is of them, of how many efforts and sacrifices they have made, of the providential rescue that has been brought to them to ease their burden. Their boats have become part of that burden, Francis says, and they will stop hauling them. This will be difficult, yes, and their feet and their legs and their souls hurt with the thousands of steps they have already made on this unwelcoming land. But when they reach Repulse Bay, they will find the comfort of a Fort waiting for them, with house and hearth. And the next time they will set foot on the deck of any boat, it will be on the one of a ship that will bring them back home. 

"Dr Rae will be our guide east, with six of his men. Sir Richardson will be returning the way they came, northwest, then along the Coppermine River. He may very well reach an outpost in August and communicate our position. They also leave with us their eight dogs to help us carry our provisions." Francis speaks not like a captain now, but like a father; and the men look at him like one, unquestioningly and with all the appearances of faith. They would follow Francis Crozier to the mouth of hell if he so asked; James knows it because he himself would follow him anywhere now. And to hell, he thinks, they might be quite close.

Once more, James glances over his shoulder, at the north, with the sentiment that some terrible thing might still surprise them.

 

 

 

They have never spoken of the dreams. Francis has them every night; James is used now to Francis's voice mumbling foreign words beside him. He does not wake Francis anymore, only because he knows that, as he would do so, Francis would see on his features how unsettled these dreams make him. He fears it would burden him further, blighting him with unnecessary torments.

So he waits for the dreams to pass, thinking perhaps this is what the poisoned tins have done, perhaps this is the scurvy in Francis... 

The dreams don't pass.

 

 

 

Dismantling the boats alone takes them two full days. It is a chance that they still have Mr Weekes's tools. Their three boats will be rebuilt into a dozen sledges in the Esquimaux way which three men or four dogs can haul. The Netsilik, Mr Blanky tells him, sometimes make sledges out of seal or caribou meat, frozen through in the winter, shaped into runners with meltwater that ices over at night. ("If things turn rough, they eat their ride.") But they lack water. And the cold, while bristly when the clouds shade the sun, is not yet intense enough to allow them that.

James works on prying wood apart from the pinnace in which he had himself rested, not nearly three weeks prior. The oak runners, taken from Erebus's orlop deck, have become hardened by decades spent at sea as ship timbers, and are desiccated by three winters spent in the ice.

The sun is still high, even though the evening has advanced, when he returns to the command tent. On his way back, he sights Francis, a hundred paces away from camp, glassing the horizon to the north of them.

It must be the cost of his efforts at carpentry that allows the thought to surface.

_What if Francis is going mad?_

James stifles it quickly, as if burned at the touch of a suspicion that feels like a betrayal.

 

 

 

One day, his alarm spills over his safeguarding. The idea that they could lose Francis, if only in spirit, is a nightmare of its own.

"Are you tired, Francis?"

"Always. As we all are." Francis shrugs, apparently puzzled. "Why?"

"On occasions, it seems you are... gone. As if rapt with something absent, somehow."

Francis stares back at him oddly, but promptly hides his thoughts. "I must be more tired than I think."

The idea that he could lose Francis, in this particular way, such that solely his mind would vacate him and leave his body behind like a memory, is a nightmare. In truth, James would give his life to save Francis from this fate without a moment's thought. But what life is there to give for the loss of spirit?

 

 

 

They leave only skeletons of the boats behind them, along with almost all the luggage they still carried. Dr Rae is a drastically practical man; so much that even Francis, ever pragmatic, is taken aback. They drop the remnants of their old food, all of it, except for some tea that the men carry on their persons. They keep the frames of their tents, but abandon most of the canvas: they will use the furs and pelts they have in their possession. They keep some tools, some knives. Dr Rae insists that they bring along the cutlery, "To trade with the Natives", as well as some of their metal cylinders destined to hold messages deposited in cairns. They keep only the guns that they can carry, the shotguns, lighter than the rifles, leaving the others behind, along with most of their powder.

Some men mention that the mutinous men may find them. Francis settles their questions with a wave of the hand. "Mr Hickey and his men are most certainly dead by now."

The tone of his voice bears a deep certainty. It reassures the men. 

 

 

 

During the first eight days, they cover nearly ninety miles if their sextant readings are accurate. Each of their new sledges weighs its weight and Dr Rae finds them heavy compared to his own. For their men, who have hauled boats over hills and ice ridges, they are as light as a feather. With only three men required to haul each sledge at a good pace, and with the help of the dogs, harnessed along with them, they progress rapidly. At the end of the day, the men are tired. They drag their feet to the tents and fall on the scree to sleep. But still, they seem to feel as content as James himself. Acceptance is slow coming, but Rae and Richardson have indeed saved them.

On the ninth day, they stop to encamp when a storm approaches from the north. From a distance, James sees Francis conferring with Mr Hartnell. A proportion of the slaughtered game they have encountered prior to their meeting with the relief party has been found by him. Not that the lad had anything to do with it, as he made clear to his Captains. It is unlikely the creature will bring them game out here, a good hundred miles south of the island -- _his_ island, James thinks, as Francis now calls it -- and so the men will have to hunt for themselves.

Yet James wonders what Francis discusses with the young sailor, as they seem to be in some confidence. The seaman listens carefully, under Francis's trusting gaze. But when Hartnell bows and turns to leave, Francis's expression becomes noticeably tense, perhaps because he believes himself unobserved, before he quickly polices it into straightness again.

Later, James finds Mr Hartnell, repairing a sledge harness. "What did Francis ask you when the two of you spoke this morning?"

Hartnell frowns. "About the amulets, sir."

 _Amulets?_ "Esquimaux charms?"

Hartnell nods. "He asked if I'd found any near the game we... happened upon on King William Island."

"And did you?"

"Yes, sir. One. In the shape of a small boat," he says. "I gave it to the Captain."

 

 

 

Dr Rae now acts as their doctor. James sees him daily to make sure the wound in his side is healing. It hurts still; he cannot much use his left arm, nor lift anything heavier than a gun; he leans on a walking stick when they march, and only he knows how much of his weight rests on it. When he first saw the wound, still a glistening pink where the musket ball had pierced the skin, Rae arched a silent eyebrow.

"You make quite the stoic man, Captain."

This time round, Rae seems satisfied with the state of the wound and leaves James to button his coat.

Henry Le Vesconte steps out from behind a curtain; on his brow, a sore glistens with the salve Mr Bridgens has just applied to it to help it close. While Dr Rae tends to the medicine chest, James eyes Henry. In the past months, the Lieutenant whom he had called and would perhaps again call a friend has withdrawn considerably; he carries out his duty dedicatedly, but his words are rare now, and he, a man once prodigal with cunning laughs, has lost all traces of joy. Henry's gaze at James is vacant, almost as if nothing at all resides behind the eyes.

James thinks again of what is happening to Francis.

Not madness proper. Merely emptiness, the greatest form of which was the one experienced by Private Heather, then by Mr Poccock after the creature's last attack. Whether this must be explained by something more than natural powers, or if it is in fact the result of sheer exhaustion, James cannot tell.

 

 

 

Tonight again, Francis appears... absorbed; he reminds James of a boat, having just lost its mooring, adrift; kept ashore by the sole push of the waves.

"Do you wonder," Francis asks him, "how it shall be to return to our homes again?"

"I do. More and more, every passing day. It shall be..." He thinks of Elizabeth and William, suddenly; their embrace and their voices echoing in the Brighton house. More than England, they were the only home he had. He wonders what they should think of him now. Even to them, he cannot even imagine recounting what has happened to them here. "It shall be difficult, I imagine."

Francis slowly screws on the cap of the canteen. "I suppose it is right that this land should have become our home, eventually."

James pauses in sipping his broth. "Our graves, you mean?"

Francis nods towards Richardson and two of his Native men, talking in a mix of French and some native tongue by the fire. "Without them, it would have been." And as seamlessly as he had vanished, Francis Crozier is again present. There is again a light in his eye, the one that James would follow like the North star, the one steering him home, wherever that will be.

 

 

 

They are only at a third of their journey, when they face their first trial. Dr Rae had anticipated it and Francis and James have spent the last few days encouraging the men to push further, faster.

Their journey due east takes them to cross the bay indenting the Adelaide Peninsula. It is nearly fifty miles wide with, in the middle, the respite of a rocky, hillous terrain, Montreal Island. The water of the bay is frozen, but even to James's untrained eyes, the ice seems beguilingly thin.

On the other side of that bay lies the rest of the mainland, and merely two hundred and fifty miles to Repulse Bay and Fort Good Hope.

Glassing the bay, they catch sight of a Netsilik settlement on the western shore of Montreal Island, past the first inlet, which is no more than a few miles wide. Dr Rae had hoped to find them there, but had not dared count on this hope much.

It is the first week of July now; the mid-day heat feels suffocating, although it is only some degrees above freezing.

Mr Blanky's brow wears a distrustful frown as he examines the ice.

"Portends ill, doesn't it?" James asks.

"Hm," Blanky says. "Half of it might be rotten. If we can get to the island, though, we could trade with the Netsilik there. They'd give us a guide for the other side of the bay."

"And the other side should be some thirty miles wide," James says. "We'd need to camp right in the heart of it." He is not keen on sleeping another night with only ice under his feet. 

 

 

 

The journey over the ice-covered inlet is treacherous and tedious. At times, loud cracks erupt from under their feet and all of them stop, watchful and nervous.

But they make it to shore.

As they near the settlement, four Esquimaux come to greet them. There is one woman and three men, including a very old one; two of them hold short harpoons; the weapons seem crude, but James knows not to underestimate them. In the distance, he glimpses women and children, by their tents; that anything could thrive here is beyond him, but that children can live and grow here makes him feel Lilliputian, like the bewildered visitors he and all of them Englishmen are in this land, their geographical and scientific pursuits as vain as sightseeing.

They form a small party to meet with the Esquimaux: Francis and himself, Mr Blanky, Dr Rae and one of his Native men as an interpreter. They leave their weapons behind with a fretful Edward Little, bringing nothing but a crate filled with what remains of the metal cylinders they have brought from _Erebus_ 's and _Terror_ 's stores and most of their cutlery.

Rae's interpreter greets the Netsilik man who advances towards them first; the two share seal meat and then begin talking while the others stay back, having exchanged only polite nods with the Natives. They are dressed in thick furs and eye them with some mild uncertainty and surprise. As they would animals they cannot be sure are tame enough not to bite. Their appearance, James realizes, must be shocking on its own. Compared to the Natives, they are malnourished, their faces colourless and unhealthy, James's still bearing the traces of the receding scurvy.

They must also, naturally, seem desperate. In all fairness, James must concede, they are. 

Mr Blanky follows the exchange, then steps forward to ask questions of his own. Dr Rae and James watch the features of the conversing men for want of understanding their talk.

But meanwhile the old man from the Esquimaux party has approached Francis who has been standing a little to the side of them.

How could this Netsilik man know that Francis spoke the Native tongue? Why is he going to Francis to talk with him, whereas it is they who need assistance? And what can they possibly be discussing? James cannot make out a word of what they say; but their exchange is quick-spoken and Francis, this being the strangest of all things, does not seem overly surprised at being so engaged. The Esquimaux man has pushed back his fur hood, showing his long braided grey hair. It seems initially as if he considers himself acquainted with Francis.

"What's going on?" James asks. But Francis stops him with a raised hand. A few steps away, Thomas frowns, but must pursue his own conversation.

Questioned by the Esquimaux man, Francis gives brief, unhesitating answers. By degrees, however, the Esquimaux elder seems to become wary of him. The old man concludes his talk with a short phrase which seems to confound Francis, then he returns to his place among his party, pushing his hood back over his head. The other Esquimaux have taken no marked notice of this, except for the party's leader who nods at the man as he returns to their side.

 

 

 

There is no time for him to ask Francis what has happened. They must move rapidly if they want to cross the bay on foot.

They pass the Netsilik camp as soon as their tradings conclude, while the ice is still solid, and begin the slow walk across the frozen bay. It cost them most of the metal they still had, but it is a small price for the skilled guide they have been given. It is a young man, no more than fifteen years old. He walks them fearlessly over the ice, stopping them suddenly from time to time, scanning the ice for shadows and minute noises that only he seems to see and hear.

He too, like the Netsilik elder, seems on guard and keeps his distance from Francis.

They stop to camp after a long day. James is on watch with Thomas Blanky. Dr Rae has tended to Thomas's leg, strained by their walk; it is bandaged again, and Thomas walks slowly now. It is no difficulty for James to match his pace in the very short circuit around their tents; in fact, he finds ease in their slow progress. Mr Blanky, a cunning man if there is one, must know, but James is glad he does not mention it.

"Do you have an inkling of what happened between that Netsilik man and Francis?" James asks when they have reached some distance from camp.

Blanky shakes his head slowly. "I didn't catch what they said. It was fast," he says, not hiding his astonishment. "I take it Francis has not told you?"

"I had no occasion to ask him." James toys with the sling of his gun. He has begun to think of Francis as someone in whom signs must be sought. The strange exchange between the Netsilik elder and Francis seems to him another sign, along with Francis's... recent absences. _Signs of what?_ "Sometimes, when I and Francis are speaking..."

"It seems like he's not wholly present?" Blanky finishes.

James blinks in agreement. It is a relief to learn that this is not the result of his own invention - but, in the same moment, it becomes a greater worry that others should have noticed it as well. Quite unconsciously, James realizes, he has wished for this to be his own delusions.

"It's..." James licks his lips, uncertain. It is as if speaking of it makes it certain and definite - that Francis Crozier may well be losing his mind. "There are strange... lapses in his words. As if he were... overburdened with the dealings of his mind, suddenly."

"I've seen it," Blanky says tightly around his pipe.

"Can scurvy do this?"

"Beats my arse, what scurvy can and cannot do. It's this land does things to people. Besides, if it were scurvy, it'd be getting better, like the lot of us are..."

"Not worse."

 

 

 

Soon enough, James has an occasion to witness for himself, just how bad things have become. They have crossed the larger inlet and have reached the eastern shore of the continent at that point; their guide has led them for a further few miles inland, and then has gone back alone on a trek of over thirty miles to his people.

That night, Francis dreams yet another dream. The words James wakes to this time are tensely whispered. Francis seems very near the point of awakening; in fact, he appears quite awake except for his closed eyes.

The strained tone of Francis's voice convinces James to attempt and rouse Francis. He reaches out from under his heavy caribou pelt, placing a hand on Francis's shoulder. "Francis." Francis shows no sign at all of waking. James tightens his grasp. "Francis," he calls again, raising his voice as much as he dares.

Still, it works not.

In earnest fright, James extricates himself from his makeshift bedding and leans over Francis, gripping both his shoulders. He shakes Francis once, then again. Francis wakes with a start, but his eyes are dazed and unfocused; James does not know where he is, but wherever that is, it is not here.

Francis brings his shaking hands up and cups James's face. James stills under the touch. Francis's gaze is bewildered. "How can you be here? How can you live?" he speaks softly.

James clasps Francis's wrists and holds them. "I'm here. You're awake, Francis."

"Awake?"

"Rescue has come for us. We're walking east. To Repulse Bay. Do you recall it?"

"East? No. No. I can't. We have to go back north. If not..."

"If not, what?" James asks.

Francis frowns deeply. His tone is lucid but terrified. What things must agitate him within, James cannot fathom. "If not he'll come for all of us."

Tightening his grip on Francis's wrists, James pull them to his chest and holds them there. "What's happened to you? Is it the creature's doing?"

Be it some thing James said, or some other he did not say, or the grasp of his fingers on Francis's arms, Francis seems to be shaken out of whatever stupor had taken him. He blinks several times and emerges from his trance, his breathing steadying slowly. 

"James... I dreamed-..." With a pressure to James's hands, he repeats: "It was merely a dream."

"Was it?" James studies Francis's brow, seeking a sheen of sweat, then his pupils. He remembers from his conversations with Harry Goodsir on the first leg of their voyage, that these are the signs of fever. But he finds none at all. Yet Francis was not talking to him just then, but rather to some ghost he addressed in his place.

"Yes." Francis restores his expression; it becomes reassuring again.

His voice is warm, but James cannot be fooled anymore. He parts from Francis and sits back on his bedding. "The Netsilik man who spoke to you on Montreal Island. What did you discuss with him?"

Francis looks away. From the clench of his jaw, James knows immediately that he lies. "He knows of Lady Silence. He asked me about what became of her. I did my best to answer him, but not to his satisfaction, I believe."

James straightens. Something in Francis's gaze begs him not to ask the many questions he has. How did this man know to address Francis? How could he have known of Lady Silence, who must be one hundred miles north of them now, more maybe? Why did the Native elder become cautious of Francis, frightened of him even? 

For a moment, no other word is spoken between them.

"Very well," James says. "Second bell of forenoon watch was just called. I best head out."

He draws his greatcoat tighter round him and leaves the tent, even though the two last hours of the forenoon watch were not his to take - he will trade them with whoever is on duty.

In the distance, Rae's dogs are barking; some caribou herd must be nearby. It is an odd sound under the cloudy sky. It reminds him of Neptune, who had one day vanished mysteriously from Terror camp.

 

 

 

Their march has brought them to a minute change of scenery; some plants become common, lichen mostly, but also some others whose leaves resemble those of cacti from lower latitudes. They seemingly grow from nothing but rocks. Not for the first time since the mutiny, James thinks of Harry Goodsir. Goodsir would inquire into the names of those plants, even now; would hypothesize as to what had brought them here, if these plains of crushed rock were indeed, as it was thought, the remains of some ancient riverbeds.

In the distance, at first, it seems like a taller bush. Or perhaps some rock of irregular shape.

James signals it to Mr Plater. They head out in its direction. It has been four days after all since they had last crossed a rivulet of potable water; and plants mean water.

When they near it, James comes to a halt.

What he had mistaken for the branches of some kind of plant life were the budding antlers of a caribou.

The animal is dead, its head at an odd angle with its body. At a glance, James suspects they will find no apparent wound on this one either. As on the others.

They have not found meat since encountering Richardson and Rae. They have hunted on their own since and, with the help of Rae's Native men, become tolerable Arctic fishermen. The men had quieted on the topic of prey slain by their invisible helper. But Seaman Plater is nonetheless frozen to the spot with alarm, his fear returning.

James's command shakes him. "Mr Plater. Return to camp. Alert Dr Rae and Captain Crozier. We'll require a sledge and at least two more men to help us load it."

The man runs off, thrilled it seems to leave behind the dead caribou.

Once the seaman leaves, James circles the body, inspecting the rocks it lies on, remembering Hartnell's confession about the amulets he has found on previous kills. He lifts his head and scans the horizon around them. Nothing in sight, as ever. James kneels by the caribou. In the cool breeze, he feels the warmth emanating from its skin. This animal was living only a moment before.

Something catches his eye; it glints in the caribou's mouth. James forces its jaws open. A bright white charm falls out from where it lay on the beast's pale tongue. It is not larger than James's palm. The sculpture is fine and the lines carved in the ivory are sharp.

It is a man. Only the figure is missing its left hand and its head. It wears a coat that no Native man would wear: it bears two rows of buttons and falls past the hip.

Noise arises in the distance. The men from camp are coming. James swallows his devouring fear and pockets the charm.

 

 

 

James must suppose that he has not managed to keep his expression as ruled as he thinks: Francis, when he arrives with Rae and two crewmen, eyes him intently. Something of what has happened must have manifested on James's features somehow.

Rae assesses the situation in a glance.

It is a strange one, James must concede. He stands by the side of a lifeless caribou, which has seemingly dropped dead at this very spot. The two crewmen - Mr Hartnell and Mr Peglar - eye the kill with the calm attention of men who have been habituated to unusual happenings. And Francis. Francis's brow is knitted, his fists clenched at his sides. Even though he has always been good at restraining himself not to act on his turmoils, Francis could hardly hide them entirely.

"You killed this animal?" Rae asks James.

James does not answer immediately. The delay alone fuels Rae's doubts.

"No," Francis says.

Rae turns to him. "Caribou do not die on their legs." He inspects the animal again. "This one is young. Healthy. Not starved. Fur's bright even."

"It is not the first time this has happened," James confesses.

"It began when we reached the south of King William Island. We found various animals on our way, dead. The way they died did not reveal itself easily to us," Francis says. His voice is steady; he holds his body straight as he lies. "We..." Francis even fakes an hesitation, and a pang of admiration echoes in James's chest as he witnesses Francis doing what he himself has done so frequently in his past. "We thought it may have been illness at first. But we were starving and we ate them regardless."

"And this happened how many times?"

"A dozen times. Maybe more," James says.

"This is how your men survived," Rae realizes.

"It is," Francis admits. "We do not know to what or whom we owe these kills. But none of my men would be here were it not for them."

Rae nods, impassive. He remains silent when Hartnell and Peglar start loading the kill on their sledge.

As they prepare to head back to camp, Rae pulls Francis aside. James is close enough to hear, even if he was not meant to. "I find this very hard to believe," Rae says. His words are grave and heavy.

"We have all had to adjust our beliefs," Francis answers. "Do not concern yourself, Dr Rae. Court martial won't believe us either."

 

 

 

The caribou meat is welcome, as it ever would be in this wilderness. Rae's men show them how to smoke it on makeshift fires.

For the first time that day, the sun inclines towards the horizon, not quite setting yet, only splaying colours on passing clouds. James has left his watch with the Netsilik on Montreal Island, but by the calling of bells it must be near ten in the evening. As if waiting for a signal, the weather changes. Wind picks up. It grows cold enough that James now wears his greatcoat again over a wool sweater, a grey one, which Bridgens gave him some days ago.

Francis finds him in what they still call the command tent, even if it is only grey canvas on creaking wood. He is holding one of the five fur parkas they have obtained in their trade with the Netsilik. The four other parkas are worn by their sick men.

Francis sets down the parka on a crate and motions to James to remove his coat.

"Other men will need it, Francis."

"Currently no-one needs it as you do. The days will get colder as we go."

There is more room for James's pride to bend under Francis's scrutinizing gaze than there was some seven weeks ago. He relents and unbuttons his greatcoat.

"Remove the sweater as well," Francis warns. "If not you may be too warm."

James huffs. "I don't believe I recall such a thing as being overly warm."

Francis smiles, no afterthought laced in his expression. It has become a rare sight now.

Under the sweater, his shirt is stained with blood that has dried long ago. He is thin enough that these clothes now seem to have been made for another man entirely. It is not an entirely odd thought, he figures.

Francis must help him slip the parka on. The fur is strangely heavy on his lithe frame and, despite it being large for him, it hugs him tightly at the wrists and shoulders. It takes only a moment before he does begin to feel warm, in a way he never had in his own clothing, starched with dried sweat.

The sunrays filtering through the canvas make for a peaceful light. Or perhaps it is the sight of the smile on Francis that lingers in him. Or perhaps the newfound warmth. But something pushes the emotion from the depths of him to his lips.

"I have grown to trust you so, that I will hold your secrets as if they were my own," James says. "I do not know what are the dreams that possess you. Or what you refrained from telling Dr Rae and myself." He fishes the Navy man-shaped amulet from his trouser pocket. "But would you at least tell me how not to think this foreshadows menace?"

Francis takes the small ivory figure from James's hand. "You found it with the caribou?"

"In its mouth."

Francis fetches from his shaving and mending kit one of the few needles they have kept. "It's not menace," he tells James. He reaches for the fur hood hanging behind James's shoulders. "Sit down."

James does, heavy with disquiet. And Francis begins to stitch the amulet in a fold of fur. James stays perfectly still, watching Francis's bony and pale wrists. When he looks up at his face, he glimpses tears lining Francis's eyes. "If not menace, then _what_?"

Francis cuts the thread and settles the hood back in place. A tear falls when he blinks. "It is luck, James."

"Francis. Tell me you know what is happening to you."

He presses a warm palm to the side of James's neck. "I do."

 

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Inaccuracy Note:
> 
> 1\. Richardson and Rae didn't have dogs.
> 
> 2\. They did leave England in Spring (and not in June, as James Ross says in the show), but their actual progress (from Montreal to the Great Lakes in Ontario, to the rivers of Saskatchewan and Alberta going north, all of this in canoes) made them get to Great Slave Lake in mid-July 1848, and up to the northern shore of the continent in late August, around Mackenzie River (which is much farther west than our frozen darlings would have been then), at which point they stopped for the winter. After the winter, Richardson returned to England while Rae and a handful of Native men stayed behind to continue the search.
> 
> 3\. I don't actually know how many portages there are on Back's Fish River, but from what I gathered, it should be more than a dozen.--EDIT: ah scratch that! i did learn it: it's 83! 83--Francis what were you thinking?!
> 
> :)


	3. August 1848: Francis

 

* * *

 

 

_The Netsilik man approaches him and calls him by his Netsilik name, Aglooka. It is not a question._

_"How do you know I am the one called Aglooka?" Francis asks._

_"I saw you in a vision," the Netsilik elder replies. "You are the one who lives."_

_"A vision? Like a... dream, or a fantasy?" He uses the Netsilik word for a mirage on seawater._

_Thomas tries to grasp their words, but Francis trusts his exchange with the elder is spoken in tones muffled enough. James steps closer earlier and asks, "What's going on?" But Francis lifts a hand to halt him._

_The elder man is wearing ivory goggles against snow blindness. He pushes them up now, exposing his eyes; they are a very dark kind of brown, where pupil and iris are the same. "I am a shaman. I have a tuunbaq with me. You have a tuunbaq with you."_

_"How do you know I have a tuunbaq with me? What does it mean? Is he after me?"_

_The Netsilik man steps back and his expression changes. He examines Francis carefully. His studying gaze reminds Francis of the one of Lady Silence when she had first come aboard their ship. Her thoughts were clear enough. She identified them as utterly dispossessed of all knowledge required for survival here, pondering the point at which their solecisms would become a threat. The Netsilik man's thoughts are the same now._

_"You do not know," the man says gravely._

_"What happens when you have a tuunbaq with you?"_

_"When the tuunbaq wants you, you must follow it. If you are a shaman and you follow it, you live," the man says, aghast at Francis's headlessness. Never would a Netsilik ignore this._

_"And if you are not a shaman?" he asks._

_"You must still follow it. If not, the tuunbaq will follow you."_

_The shaman slides his snow goggles back into place, nods coldly and walks away._

 

 

 

Francis is in a snowhouse with Lady Silence. _Terror_ is gone. He is dressed as a Netsilik--deerskin and fur; his chin is bearded; his left hand is missing.

"I have a question for you," he says.

Lady Silence nods.

"Do I need to die?"

Silence pauses her work. She is peeling blubber from the skin of a young netsik. It is dirty work; the snow and her hands and arms are covered in blood. She takes the head of the seal, still intact, and opens its mouth. She slips her hand inside and then brings it out again, as if she were pulling something from the animal's throat, plucking its tongue out.

It sends a shiver down Francis's spine as it had in _Terror_ 's great cabin.

 

 

 

He walks with Silence.

"Why does he want my soul? What does he want with it?"

_Your anirniq is good. It is clear like young ice. Clean like water from a first snow. He wants that._

"We have gods too, where we come from. One god. Good souls are favoured by him. Not killed."

 _Tuunbaq wants your anirniq for himself. Like meat. We eat seal and it becomes flesh and skin and hair, and children and family and love. The tuunbaq eats you and you become him_.

"Where do I go, if tuunbaq eats my anirniq?"

Lady Silence frowns. She does not fathom his question. _In the sky with the stars. And in the sea with the seals. You live inside tuunbaq._

 

 

 

  
_Did you find the amulets?_ she asks him.

"Yes."  
  
_Did you keep them?_

Francis says, "I offered them to a friend."

Silence frowns. _Tuunbaq may protect you if you wear them_. She presses her hand to her heart, over the fur. _Here_.

"I don't intend to request his protection," Francis says.

 

 

 

He hunts seal.

 

 

 

He watches James's body being buried, in a blanket sewn shut, under the rocks.

 

 

 

He finds abandoned tents and scattered crates and tins, and bodies, so many bodies.

 

 

 

Thomas Hartnell comes to him and Francis pauses, wondering whether he is real, or if he is about to disappear, shot. Blanky speaks to him and Francis remembers the tears he has cried on his shoulder, as they hugged on the shale. James hands him the sextant; their fingers brush; Francis is reminded of frailer fingers, bandaged, held in his hand.

Is this how the tuunbaq kills him? By setting upon him the images of all those he loves, dying?

 

 

 

Behind him, _Terror_ is sinking.

The tuunbaq waits for him. Francis walks away from his ship. It is falling through the ice with the sound a hurt animal makes as it cries for help, trapped and wounded.

The creature crouches on the ice, motionless.

Francis keeps walking, his jaw clenched tight and his entire body fraught with fear.

The images invade his mind. They block his sight as surely as closing his eyes would, erupting and then dancing away at hiccuping speed.

Francis stumbles. "What is it you wish I did?" he whispers. The tuunbaq's gaze on him is unwavering.

The images are sent to him from the creature, Francis realizes. The tuunbaq does not talk in words, as Silence is able to voice thoughts in his head. But the tuunbaq can in some manner enter his mind and transform his dreams and imagination.

An image forms. His men are walking over the endless shale. There are thirty-five of them. Francis sights himself among them. The creature brings them meat, again and again. His men live and walk on. They meet John Rae on the mainland. They dismantle the sledged boats and continue east. They have been saved. Francis does not see himself anymore. James walks with Dr Rae at the head of their party. Blanky is off the side, slower with his ice-pick. All their men are up now; they have the wan but striving gazes of those who are finally returning home. But Francis himself is nowhere.

The image stills, like a play instantly reshaped in one of the tableaus at St. James's Theatre.

The tableau changes. Francis sees shale again and many camps strewn on it. Tents battered by winds and divinely gales. Poles broken. Beds covered in stains and blood; and corpses. Some frozen in the cold. Some left on soiled mattresses. Some cut in pieces, and some of the parts in kettles.

Francis cannot turn his mind away as he would his head, cannot keep himself from this nightmare.

And among them all, walking still, is Francis Crozier. In ragged clothes, bearded and emaciated but alive. _I live_ , he thinks, _and they all die_. _They live, and I am gone_.

I am gone.

The images fade.

The tuunbaq steps forward, taller than the ice blocks around them. Francis is kneeling on the ice; shivering, he feels the touch of fur against his cheek.

"I understand," he says. "I go... north? Yes? North, where you can find me..."

The creature exhales a puff of misty breath. Francis understands it means yes.

 

 

 

The cries from the camp wake Francis. At his side, James is gone already--perhaps he has not returned from his watch, perhaps he was already out. Where is he now? And what is going on?

He grabs the shotgun in the corner of the tent.

The men rush towards the northern perimeter. Faces are stricken with worry once more. Francis joins Jopson. "What has happened?"

"I don't know, Captain. They found something, I believe. More meat perhaps."

It was just a week ago that they found the caribou. This is too soon.

The men have gathered in a circle. Francis must push his way through their ranks. He halts when he glimpses what it is that they have seen.

The kill is not an animal this time. The body still wears what must have at some point been a uniform. The pants at least are recognizably those of a Marine. The large leather belt, tied in a knot at the waist also is from the Marines' uniform. The torso is punctured in four places with wounds deep and wide, and the pale, thin shirt is streaked with dark, frozen blood. The left hand is missing, cut cleanly off at the wrist. The head is-... The head is severed at the jaw, with teeth and bone shining white among all the... all the red. The body is disposed on the rocks, with no blood visible underneath. This man was not killed here. He was brought here.

Dr Rae stands beside the body, pale and unyielding. His men talk among themselves with hushed voices and they do not step close. James is there, dressed and armed. They have seen things like this from the tuunbaq before--worse things, perhaps. But their fear is now vividly renewed. The men around Francis sway on their feet and whisper questions.

"All of your men and mine are accounted for," Rae says. "Do you know who this is?"

The vision comes to Francis in a blink. He is on Terror again; they prepare their march; they store the rifles and shotguns in wooden crates. The Marines are there, passing on weapons. Sergeant Tozer reports to Francis. "We suggest keeping the shotguns at the ready, sir, not in crates. Rifles can go in there, but shotguns we'd better keep at hand in case the thing comes." Tozer does not wear the Marines' red coat, but the same outer layers as them. He has tucked his coat in a large belt tied at his waist-...

"Sergeant Solomon Tozer," Francis says. "He led the detachment of Marines on _Terror_. He deserted and joined rank with Mr Hickey during the mutiny."

"Could he have followed us here?"

"Not on his own. He was misguided, but he was a leader of men. He wouldn't have left them behind."

Rae advances towards him, filled with contained ire. "I want to know what is happening. This instant."

Francis swallows tersely, then nods at James. They instruct the men to disperse.

 

 

 

They cover Tozer's body with the last of their wool blankets.

"You've seen this before."

"I have," Francis says. He tilts his head at James. "We both have. We lost dozens of men this way. They were lured onto the ice and killed, attacked. Torn to pieces. "

"Then you know what kills them?"

"We don't know much. And the little we know has not saved our men from its claws."

"Tell me."

Francis exhales with resolve. "Dr Rae, do you know what a tuunbaq is?"

The bulky man frowns. "A tuunbaq? A Netsilik spirit, invoked by shamans?"

Francis nods. "Have you ever faced any?"

"No," Rae says. "But I met a Netsilik shaman at York Factory. A man who claimed to have a tuunbaq living inside his mouth. Said he could unleash it on those present at his command."

"Did that man have a tongue?"

"He could talk."

"We met a Netsilik man during our second winter here. We killed him, inadvertently, mistaking him for a bear. I am quite sure now that man was a shaman. His tuunbaq is after us."

"Really?" Rae turns to James. "Did you see it?"

"It has the shape of a bear. But it runs faster than any bear we have ever encountered. It is considerably taller and bigger. We have fired one cannon ball at it, hit it with musket balls and burnt it with rockets. Yet, still, it lives."

"And... this is after us now?"

Francis can witness in Dr Rae what they have themselves gone through, a year ago now, back on _Erebus_ and _Terror_. His demeanour slowly loses what anger it retained. The furore engendered by the horrific loss of a man's life, and its display as a spectacle, recedes. Rae loosens slightly, but the tension does not leave him. The thought has finally entered his mind, that this is not a beast whose savage prowesses are a mere obstacle; it is an enemy, a creature unknown on their earth, gifted with intent and it has taken them as prey.

It is a strange thing to see in a man, and in so rapid a transition--the passage from bile to dread.

"Not _us_ ," Francis says "It's after me."

"After you? What... Is that what the-... the dreams are about?" James asks him.

"What dreams?" Rae asks.

"I have dreams in which our men die. All of them."

"What tells you your... monster is responsible for this?"

"He is there. In the visions."

"Has any other man had similar experiences?"

Francis shakes his head. "Not that I am aware."

Dr Rae strokes his forehead with his fur-covered hand in fretful perplexity. A deep frown crosses his brow as he considers their situation and its implications.

Although Francis could not blame anyone who would judge him disordered in spirit, Rae does not seem to think Francis deranged--his familiarity with the lives and customs of the Natives no doubt accounting for this. He accepts the recount of how an Irish naval man became haunted in the Arctic by an ancient, otherworldly creature with little more than a frown. For the members of their expedition, it had required quite the _salto mortale_ merely to conceive that such a creature existed. Rae eludes the initial distrust that such a thing as a tuunbaq may be encountered and his true hindrance originates more, Francis suspects, in the timing of the revelation.

Quickly Rae's practical mind appears set on some inquiry to study their options. He observes the landscape. The land is as flat as ever. The wind has picked up and the sky has clouded over: a storm is coming. It should be upon them in less than a day. "We need to bury your man, Tozer. Then we'll need your officers and a plan."

 

 

 

John Rae does not dispute what Francis and his men report, nor does he challenge what his senses and instincts tell him with an Englishman's patient deliberations.--But his practicality may be what misleads him most.

He smokes pensively at a distance while their combined men bury Tozer's corpse under a low cairn. Then he assembles the officers.

"Our greatest enemy, save for your creature, is time," he tells them. "You've all detected the autumn winds have caught up with us. This is the first of the wintery gales that bring the cold in their steps. Whatever we must do, we must do quickly."

"What do we do?" Edward Little asks. "If it wants the Captain?"

Edward is pallid and he hesitates as if his speech would materialize the creature.

Rae has spread a map on a crate. He points to places around their camp. "We need three groups of men, all of them well armed. We will dispose them to the north of us."

"We have used all weapons we have against this beast. Except for the ship's six-pounder gun and congreves, none has ever slighted it," James says. "What weapons do you propose we use? We kept only the shotguns to lighten the load. Even our rifles are gone."

"The beast, it is very large, yes? And heavy?"

"Hm," Blanky nods. "More than a white bear. Runs faster too."

"We shall impale it."

The men still in bemused silence.

"Impale it? How?" Francis asks.

Rae returns to the map. "We dig a pit or a trench, which we hide under branches and pelts. We line it with sticks, sharpened at their extremity and fashioned into spears. The beast will become injured as it falls. The men approach and discharge their weapons."

"And how do we get it in the trench?" Jopson asks.

Rae turns to Francis.

Francis grasps his meaning. This is his chance, then. "I will act as bait," Francis says. "Lead him into the trap, where the men can kill it for good."

Quiet settles over the gathered men. Some shake their heads; some nod.

"I do not favour it," James says.

"Dr Rae is correct on all counts," Francis says, slowly, and, he hopes, convincingly. "It may be our only chance."

"What if he simply... fetches you, Francis? What then?"

"Then he'll leave our party alone all the same," he says. "If it's me that he wants, then he can take me and leave the rest of you to-"

"No," James retorts. "I shan't have it."

"I am only one man, James. And I am more than willing to lose my life if it means the bulk of you return to England."

"We baited this creature before. We both know how well that went, Francis."

Rae intervenes. "The beast will not have time or chance to reach you, Captain. It will have no occasion to take you."

He explains the details of his plan. Agreement, if not conviction, spreads among the officers--save for James and Blanky.

In his mind, Francis finalizes his own plan.

 

 

 

Before they can dig the trench, they must weather the storm. When asked whether the tuunbaq may come at them during the gale, Rae answers that he hopes not. In the meantime, they must solidify their tents, anchor the pegs, secure their provisions and material under rocks as heavy as they may find them. Of little help with the preparations, Thomas Blanky volunteers to be part of a fresh water party. Francis joins him.

They smoke in silence for most of the trek. "It might work," Francis says.

Blanky pats him on the shoulder with an inscrutable smile.

"What?"

"Is this another one of those conversations?"

They stop. "What conversations?"

"When the both of us know you're lying."

Francis puffs on his pipe quietly. Of course Thomas knows. Thomas always knows, as if Francis's mind and soul were made of ice and snow, and Thomas knew what its sounds and shapes and colours meant at a glance. Still, Francis tries and, as confidently as he can, offers, "I'm not lying."

Thomas only smiles at him with the friendliest, most loving face Francis has seen on him. "See?"

"I'm not lying about the creature," Francis rephrases.

"Oh, I give you all credence for that," Blanky says. "No reason you'd lie about that."

"What do I have a reason to lie about?"

"Well, most of the rest. The plan. The baiting. The trench."

"It might work, Thomas," Francis insists. "And he won't let us go. I thought... I thought he would, but he won't. We have to try." He pauses. "He won't let me go."

Blanky studies him. "I thought about it too. I mean, I understand that it crossed your mind." Francis frowns in puzzlement. "Before we found the game. It occurred to me. Me and my wooden leg were a burden, after all. Slowing all of you down." He goes on. "To walk out. Lead the tuunbaq out there."

The dreams are hard to ignore now; Francis recalls little of them to a precision of a thought, but he does know that in them Thomas dies. "You wouldn't have slowed us down, Thomas."

"Maybe not, but I did think it. Same way you think you burden us now." Blanky moves closer, steadies himself on his peg leg and grips Francis. "But just so there's no falsehood between you and I, Francis Crozier. Whatever hustles you thought up in that head of yours, don't think I'll let you go this easy."

 

 

 

"You asked for me, Captain?"

Francis folds in two of the page he has torn from his journal. "Yes, Jopson. I have a service to request of you."

"Whatever you need."

Francis breathes out to collect himself. Lying has never suited him. He feels like he is trying on an ill-fitting suit, hoping that no one would notice it was not made for him. "If I should not survive-"

"Sir..."

"If I should not survive tomorrow, there are some matters I would ask you to settle in my name once you return to England."

"What..." The Lieutenant removes his cap. His voice falters. "What matters, sir?"

"I do not own much in the world. But I have family--sisters who are under my care. They live in Banbridge, where I was born. Could you make sure that each of them receives an equal share of my few liquidities and possessions?" He holds out the paper. Jopson hesitates, his fingers fluttering at his sides. He takes it. "This note will introduce you to Mr Townley, at the bank of College Green in Dublin. The formal arrangements have already been made. I only ask that you should see it proceeds duly."

The instructions he has written also specify that a payment be made "to Lt Thomas Jopson RN, bearer of the present note". He does not tell Jopson this now, afraid the humble young man would refuse.

Jopson's eyes are lined with tears. Not for the first time in his life, Francis wishes he were a man of words. He wishes he could tell Jopson how proud he has made him, time and time again; that he feels that a bond of blood would not be stronger than theirs. But his words fail him. He reaches for Jopson instead and clasps his hands over his. Jopson cannot quite meet his eyes either, and presses his hand back.

Jopson goes. Francis closes his eyes tightly. He hopes that this is the Thomas Jopson he will remember, if he is to remember anything where he is going, and not the one who dies out in the open.

 

 

 

The clouds gathering at the northwest pile like a mountain in the sky. The storm will not reach the camp before dawn next. It should not last more than a day, perhaps two. Rae's plan has them beginning to dig the trench as soon as it stops.

Francis's plan is to leave well before anyone starts digging.

The tent-flap is lifted to let James in. He has just returned from what must have been a last attempt to convince John Rae not to enact his plan. His expression eloquently conveys that he has failed.

Francis whole-heartedly shares James's reservations, even if he cannot say so--and even if he cannot blame Rae's ardour and resourcefulness in assisting them. The digging will weaken their men, even if they seem enthusiastic to the task, hoping to slay the creature once and for all. But the tuunbaq is not to be baited and snared. If anything, he is much cleverer than them in this regard.

James tugs off his fur parka. He plops down. "John Rae is a dumbfoundingly mulish man," he says dryly. "Perhaps equal in this manner only to you, Francis."

"You discount yourself unfairly from the list of stubborn men on this expedition."

"It's not as if it changed anything, is it? Rae's mind is potently set, as if the damn thing were made of stone. Drawing on your approbation of his proposal--which approbation bewilders me."

Francis comes close, once more, as he often has in the past hours, to reveal everything and surrender the weight on his soul to the confession. Yet he perseveres in his design. For this is the only way James survives. "It is a good plan. Perhaps we should have thought of it ourselves beforehand--to use his weight against him. And should the storm bring rain, the ground will soften, making digging the trench easier."

"It is not the trench that dismays me most," James says. "This requires you to sit as bait on an open plane, weaponless, fifty yards away from our armed men, awaiting a monster who has outsmarted all our attempts to subjugate it." James's words come out tensely. He is visibly upset beyond all means. "This will not work. Need I remind you of the misfortune of the hunting blind? Sir..." He catches himself. "This is exactly how we lost Sir John and how you lost Thomas Evans. How can you fail to see that this is also how we lose you?"

It takes all Francis's might to maintain his demeanour as he hears James's words. Finally, he reaches out and sets his hand on his arm. "This is not how I am lost. This is how this entire party survives," he says. "We have learned things, since Sir John's death-" --he swallows-- "and since Evans's. We know now not to underestimate him. I know. I will not-" --he tightens his grip on James's arm-- "I _will not_ needlessly endanger myself."

"Really?"

Francis's throat refuses to let out another sound. There are only so many lies he can utter.

He nods softly.

In Francis's mind, James's dying face settles over the one of James now; his skin is less taut, his lips less chafed, his hair not damp with fever; but his eyes are the very same. James is crying and Francis cannot tell if it is this James here or the James of his visions who does.

They stay like this a moment, their silent dissent slowly dissolving.

"Come," Francis says. "We should eat. At least to fixate our thoughts on less somber prospects."

James accepts, running a hand over his face as he recovers his composure.

Sitting down, Francis pushes towards James a metal plate of prepared pieced dry meat.

He then settles to cut more for himself with his knife. "Do you have people who love you, in England? Your adoptive family?" he asks.

James slips a piece of meat in his mouth. "Those who raised me from infancy have passed now. But their son, William, and his wife Elizabeth are like brother and sister to me, even dearer perhaps. I belong with them."

"Are they in London?"

"In Brighton. My brother..." James smiles faintly, cheered by the recollection. Francis is happy to see his thoughts sway from their unsettling patterns. "William is what must perhaps be called a radical." Francis frowns, pressing him on. "His temperament has always been of the melancholy sort, ever since childhood. He collects works of art--the Brighton home is quite full of them--and offers his patronage to poets. But since Robert, his father, died, he has started to turn an eye to politics. Last I spoke with him, in '44, he declared himself an atheist."

Francis eats calmly. James has eaten his own share already, under Francis's careful watch.

"We were quite the pair as youths, William and I. I was ever restless and he placid, frequently ill..." James drifts off. "I'll annoy you with stories. Trifles."

"No," Francis says. "Tell me more."

Never previously has he been filled with ardent affection for the man before him as he is now.

And James talks.

He tells Francis of the time he and William collected frogs from a pond, filled their pockets and had to explain, at dinner, where did such croaking sounds come from; or tales of their tutor of Latin, a Mr Santi, "a Piedmontese gentleman with a most comical accent; his Latin was more intelligible to us than his English, which turned out to be a truly disadvantageous method of teaching..."

If Francis had any choice of it, this moment would be what he remembered. The glow of the lamp casting shadows on all things beyond them two and a gilded sheen on James's brow. James's voice fortifying as he tells Francis of childhood and friendship. They are not in the Arctic, they are not on any of Her Majesty's Ships; they are home, preserved in Francis's heart.

It happens more suddenly than Francis has planned. But he has after all used on James's pieced meat twice the dosage Dr MacDonald had instructed.

James's words turn into a slur. He steadies himself on a crate with one hand. His other hand goes to his head. "'pologies. Am... impossibly tired," he murmurs.

"All is well," Francis says. "Sleep," he urges. "Sleep."

Francis helps James recline on his bedding. His eyes close and he is sound asleep before he is even lying down.

For some time, Francis stays by James, his hand in his. It takes an exceptional act of will to let go.

 

 

 

He leaves once the gale is fully upon them. He wishes he could bid all of them goodbye; exchange a few words, one last time; glimpse perhaps a silhouette. But in the dark of the obscured sky there is no such thing. No fire is lit, the shapes of their tents barely discernible above the rocks.

Behind, in the tent, he leaves almost all he possesses: his journal, his pipe and tobacco, his fob watch. He takes a flask of water, but will not deprive the men of any meat they have. He verifies that, in James's fur parka, hanging to dry, the amulets are still firmly stitched in the fur where he has encased them, the boat hidden in a chest pocket and the headless man in the hood. In case the tuunbaq returns here, at least James should be safe, as long as he wears it.

Outside, the wind nearly sweeps him off his feet. Francis digs his ice-pick in the ground and he marches.

 

 

 

Heading north brings him into the heart of the storm. When hail starts, he crouches under a hummock of rock. It lasts for some time, hours perhaps.

His body fights to stay upright; meanwhile, his mind is overcome with a torrent of thoughts and memories, not dissimilar to the onslaught of the tempest around him. Perhaps he should fear the storm less and his thoughts more. But it turns out to be easier to walk north and keep his pace steady, than to straighten his thoughts, which carouse in his breast as if possessed of their own will.

 

 

 

He falls to his knees at one point. He stopped counting his paces at five thousand, and this was--it seems--a lifetime ago. He settles against a large block of limestone, taller than himself, and he sleeps.

Lady Silence awaits in a clear morning. She has her sled with her and she has been walking. Francis is lagging behind. He jogs up to join her.

Over a ridge, Francis sees it, nested between some knolls--a camp. In the distance, he can see one sledged boat, a handful of tents, one of their stoves, and a table set for men to eat. Is this their men? Is this earlier, or later than now?

He interrogates Silence with a glance, but she stares ahead coldly.

This, he realizes, is a village of ghosts. The men are motionless and solid, but transparent at the same time. There is Mr Hickey sitting at the table, in the centre. Some of his mutinous crew is with him--Mr Armitage, Mr Diggle, with scared eyes like a trapped mouse, Lieutenant Hodgson on the side, with a plate on his knees. Dr Goodsir is there as well.

"Goodsir. Are you here, truly?"

The surgeon is dressed in furs and deerskin, like Silence, with his beard unshaved. "I am not certain, Captain," he says. He points behind Francis.

Francis turns. On a table off the side, Harry Goodsir's body lies on its front. Flesh has been taken from his buttocks, his thigh, his arms. The shock climbs from Francis's stomach to his throat. He tries to swallow, but finds his mouth dry.

"Don't stare at it too long," Goodsir says. "There is no use that I have found."

"What is this?" Francis says.

Goodsir gestures to Lady Silence, who has not approached, remaining on her ridge. "It is a lot like what we name a dream, I suppose. There is nothing to tell me it is not here--I hear things, see things, feel things as if I were in a conscious state. Yet I cannot be here and living-" --he nods to the body behind them-- "and there and dead."

 

 

 

He wakes wretched and cold. He does not sense exhaustion in himself; he senses death. It climbs from the rocks he walks on into his boots, his legs, his belly.

His canteen is empty.

The storm has ended long ago.

 

 

 

He dreams of Sophia in his rooms in London. Draped on a chair is her long black mantle, which cloaked her from view in the crowded streets as she came here without an escort. In his bed where she sits with him, she wears nothing. They can speak of everything here, with no one to disturb them, no servants and a locked door.

Winter has left frost at the bottom of the windowpanes. "Icebergs are not so," Francis has answered her question. "This has the appearance of snow, in a way. Bergs are clearer in hue, and blue in colour on account of the frozen seawater." He has often told her of how he had sailed _Terror_ in a narrow passageway between the Antarctic wall of pack ice and a closing berg--mainly because his account of it ("I have no idea how it occurred that we survived this-- _none_!") has never failed to draw a laugh from her. Not the mannerly, societal giggle against the back of her hand--but a laugh that tilts her chin up, loosens her shoulders and brings joy to her cheeks.

He loves her so it tightens him whole, like a noose.

"I have these... ideas, sometimes, of how inexact my expectations were. Does it happen to you, Francis?"

"What expectations?"

"Being loved. It had never occurred to me that it could be so confounding."

Francis, at the time, was not sure what this meant. In his dream, he replies as he then had, "No. Love is always unmistakable for me."

 _Is it_? the dream asks.

 

 

 

It is when he cannot walk anymore that the tuunbaq comes. Was he watching all along? Waiting?

On his knees, Francis feels the ground shaking.

"Finish it," he rasps. "I'm here. Isn't that what you want?"

The tuunbaq does not bite into his head. He does not shake his body until it breaks. No claws slash his back. He noses at Francis's neck. His warm breath brushes the skin.

A wide mouth opens and teeth sink into Francis's overcoat. The creature picks him up. And off they go.

North, always.

Francis's eyes close as the tuunbaq carries him.

 

 

 

He is at Whitehall. Officers wear their full dress uniforms, their backs stiff in the pressed felt, their voices mellow with the brandy; their wives dance in satin and silk, jewels sparkling under the chandeliers. Conversations wirl around him and Francis Crozier waits for his chance to leave.

John Barrow is there, with his eldest son; Sir John Ross also and his nephew; they speak in tones that Francis should have grasped, but none of their words reach him, somehow. His hand searches for a glass out of habit.

James Fitzjames is there, all ease among the sparkling glasses and cramped formalities. They have met before. But when was it?

"What are you doing, Francis?"

"What...?"

James repeats, more earnest this time, then asks him: "Is being loved so exacting that you should so limpidly seek to escape it?"

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Rae's anecdote about a shaman saying a tuunbaq lives inside his mouth is not fictional. I took it from a 1963 paper--Shamanistic Behavior among the Netsilik Eskimos, by Asen Balikci--which I found extraordinarily helpful concerning the topic. Don't let yourselves be put off by its age: it is remarkably devoid of racist and colonialist presuppositions. (Also, it's on sci-hub.)
> 
> 2\. I ripped Rae's (hopeless, but points-for-effort) plan from a 1997 movie, The Edge, which I'm fond of. In the movie, two average dudes stranded in Alaska are stalked by a giant grizzly bear and kill it by impaling it on sticks.
> 
> 3\. In Kajganich's pilot script, the tableaus take place at Royal Opera House (aka Covent Garden Theatre) in 1844. This is impossible: the theatre was closed from 1842 to 1847. I placed the tableaus in St. James's Theater, which was open under this name (if apparently in financial difficulties) from 1842 and until 1854, at which point the administration and name changed again. All of this fits with the series, of course, where the theatre scene in episode 1 doesn't have a title card (?). (Now, I don't know these places from the inside: maybe the set (the boxes, the decorations, the velvet curtains, etc.) is supposed to reference the Royal Opera House as it existed at some point. I also don't know much about the tableaus themselves: it certainly seems like something 19th-century Europe would produce as entertainment, but I have never read anything mentioning them; there might be documentation out there on such things, maybe including where they were most likely performed, etc.--I confess I haven't searched.)
> 
> 4\. In this, Francis Crozier's bank is the Bank of Ireland. This is very likely inaccurate (I have the impression I read, maybe some time ago, that the Royal Navy might have a bank for its staff, but I don't recall it well enough to even search for it)--anyhow, I couldn't find it in the biographies and I didn't push it.


	4. August and September 1848: James

 

 

* * *

 

James wakes to a vigorous shake of his shoulders. Despite the disturbance, his body resists the pull of wakefulness. A hand lands on his cheek with enough force that, were he more awake, he should have named it a slap. But even the offence fails to rouse him fully from the mad dark where he has fallen.

He attempts to rise. Thomas Blanky is leaning over him, Jopson, Little and Rae behind him, stricken and mournful. Through the remaining shrouds of sleep, at their expressions, James discerns that something horrible has occurred. 

"What did he give him?" Blanky asks the others.

"What?..." James mumbles.

Jopson's gaze settles on the empty amber vial left on a nearby crate. "The sleep-aid drops Dr MacDonald prepared for him."

The memory of his last meal with Francis--Francis, oh divine love no--is to his mind as a passing dream: he must cling to its misty vapours and blinking pictures before they pass. Francis. "Francis..."

"He's gone. Walked off during the storm," Blanky tells him. 

"Gone..."

Blanky is correct: Francis is not in the tent and his bedding at James's side is undisturbed. But--worse--the pelts where Francis slept have been carefully smoothed; on the trunk beside them, Francis's belongings are lined in a neat row, prepared for their use by others, an abandoned gift. This is no mere departure, this is a man leaving life behind.

Sensing darkness about to overcome him again, James fights to remain upright. He tries to will his eyelids open. Thomas Blanky calls out, "Commander!"

 

 

Some time has passed when James wakes next, hours perhaps; if they were days, he could not determine. Sleep has relinquished its hold on his mind. Dr Rae's hand is at his neck, and he counts James's heartbeats on his fobwatch. Hidden behind his vast beard, Rae's features are opaque; James discerns though what must be hardship and doubt, with fury underneath. Rae tells him all that has passed while James has lain senseless.

\--that Francis is gone, which James recalled...

\--that they have also just discovered that Mr Blanky is also gone...

\--that the creature has not been seen again...

\--that James is the senior officer now, and that as soon as he feels able, they must discuss what to do...

But James does not quite listen. His senses forsake him once more.

Francis Crozier is gone.

The death of Sir John Franklin had taken them all as an unforeseen storm coming upon a becalmed sea. Like all of them, James Fitzjames had felt listing and shaken. Francis's departure affects him entirely otherwise: he feels cleaved open from head to toe.

 

 

Under the care of Dr Rae, he lies prostrate for a day, waiting for the preparation Francis has given him to finally release him from torpor. By the end of that day, the gale has exhausted itself. Their camp is silent, James discovers, stumbling outside in the eternal blinding daylight. The men stare at him with dismayed faces--lost, again--and thus assembled, they seem to be at attention for a funeral.

It must be the first moment of his life--and perhaps that is why it is so strange--in which James finds himself entirely ignorant of what to do.

Among the possessions Francis left behind in their tent is his journal of their progress. James turns the wrinkled pages until he reaches the very last entry, dated two days prior.

It reads: _Combined party of Navy men and the relief expedition is marching east. Current position, by last notation, is 67º 35' north by  90º 82' west. All men are on foot, although illness is still present. Have yesterday found the body of Sergeant Solomon Tozer. Buried at 67º 32' north by  90º 75'  west. This written on the third day of August 1848._ Underneath is an adieu of few words: _Further entries to be filled by Captain James Fitzjames._

James finds his resolve as his eyes linger on the last line.

He knows what he will do now.

 

 

Rae's men have begun packing the sleds. Three for their provisions, three for the pelts, one to carry the small medicine chest and their other instruments. John Rae himself, James locates at the northern limit of their camp, amid the heavier stones disposed as markings for the place where their men had planned the digging of the trench to lure and kill the creature.

Lure the creature. The thought seems even more bizarre now.

Rae reacts with brittleness--Francis's disappearance is not only a blow to the rescue expedition, but also an affront to his initiative. It is plain now that Francis Crozier had no intention of enacting Rae's plan. Perhaps he knew more than he told them about the creature and its intentions, although James cannot fathom what. These doubts must filter in Rae's mind just as well as in James's.

"We cannot leave," James announces.

"We must," Rae says. He gestures around them to the white sprinkle of snow melting in pools between the rocks. "This gale was only the first of many to come. Unless we reach Repulse Bay by August's end, its waters will have frozen. Some of your men will tolerate wintering at the Fort, but many might not."

"If we don't send a party after Francis now, we are leaving him to his death," James says. "Surely, you cannot ignore this?" He would like Rae to see eye to eye with him; but if he does not, his own actions will be the same.

A wicked wind blows. Rae tightens his fur hood on his head. "I know it. But this land does not grant us the luxury to choose one man over the many we may yet save," Rae says. "Captain Crozier knew this just as well."

"You assume that no... delusions were leading him-..."

"I hate to be so practical in so dire a time," Rae cuts him off. "But if your Captain was indeed led by fantasies, then it may be for the good of us all that he should have left. And if he was not, then your creature may very well have taken him, if the storm hasn't." Rae's harshness hides how torn he is, James can see. "Your Captain's departure has already robbed us of one more man. If I let any more men go now, our party could disintegrate..."

The rest of Rae's words never reach James. He walks out of the tent as briskly as his stiff legs would carry him.

 

 

James finds Jopson and Little in the command tent. At a loss, they sit on each side of the trunk where Francis's belongings are still lined up.

"We're... leaving, then?" Edward asks.

"Rae is inflexible," James confirms.

Jopson's eyes are red. His shoulders are sagging, as if bearing already the heaviest burden.

James Fitzjames has never been a man of the same material as Francis. He is not as solid, never as steady on his legs and in his will as Francis was. He has bent easily in the past, and to weak and unconvincing men when the circumstances seemed to call for it. He is done bending.

He clasps his hand on Edward's shoulder and tells him, "Lieutenant Little. You're in charge of our men now."

Edward looks up, weary surprise arching his brow. "Sir?"

At his side, Jopson has understood already. 

"I cannot leave Francis here to die, Edward. I have tried to find in me the strength to accept his sacrifice and I have failed. I will attempt to return him to us. Should I fail, I will join him."

 

 

James packs in little time. He brings water, a pound of dried salmon from his and Lieutenant Little's rations which Jopson insists to surrender to him; besides that, a knife and the shotgun, the one Francis usually took on watch, will suffice for his aims.

He leaves at midday. The men's chatter quietens as he passes. His ears are closed to them, his eyes attached to the horizon. He has left behind his glass, the only reminder of his being an officer of the Royal Navy. He is no officer anymore. He is no one.

 

 

His pace is not near what it had been before the scurvy set in him; his ankles sometimes twist unduly on rocks, and, as he proceeds north, the snow left by the squall becomes a thicker blanket; he must be wary of mud that could entrap his worn boots with unspoken force. The storm will have erased all traces of Francis's passage; adding to this difficulty, James has at least forty hours to make up for. He moves as quickly as he can. It takes him no effort to ignore his thoughts, for all of them seem to have vacated him. He advances like a soldier does following orders: for no other reason than that he must not and will not falter.

He knows he has never neared death as much as he does now. Not when he was sick with scurvy. Not when he contemplated the flames of carnivale. It comes with a thrilling chill.

 

 

He has no compass and no chart. He does his best with the sun, but eventually he loses count of his steps and must reckon the distance he has walked so far. On the first day, he does not stop to sleep. Light and unburdened, he walks fifteen miles. On the second day, he collapses and falls into a slumber on rocks which sharp edges do not bother him.

On the third day, he is suddenly drawn tight with hope: he glimpses smoke--a lonely, thin column, perhaps three miles out. He quickens his pace.

He discovers the maker of the fire nested below a ridge of blackened rock. It is only as he sees him that he understands how high had his hopes soared that it would be Francis.

Thomas Blanky sits before his fire, his broken peg leg discarded beside him.

 

 

Thomas tells him that as soon as he realized Francis had rendered James unconscious to cover his departure, he set out after him. "You won't catch up with him," he tells James. "Well, with them--might be the case."

"Them?"

"I found prints. There's bootprints, but there's the creature's also. These tracks were at least three days old when I saw them."

James drives his walking stick into the ground, cursing under his breath. Three days! Two days, perhaps he could have hoped to-...  
  
_Damn you, Francis_.

His legs ache from heel to hip, his cap does little to shield him from the glaring sun and he has grown so tired that even the light fur parka burdens him. Yet--he does not know what would happen if he stopped walking, he only knows that this is what he can do for Francis, where he has failed to do so much for so long a time.

"You'll die," Blanky tells him. "If you keep walking." Why does the man have such an uncanny ability to read others' minds?

Thomas Blanky reminds him so strongly of Francis in his brutal candour that James cannot bring himself to lie. "I... I care not," he says, discovering the truth of the words only as he hears them. "Francis is more to me than my very life."

Thomas chuckles around his unlit pipe. He eyes James Fitzjames from his head to his toes. What must he see? James wonders. A worn officer, eerily loyal to a superior? Or a friend, needing at last to find this other part of himself, lost out there on the ice? Or... or what? "That much, eh?" Blanky says.

They stay like this, Blanky filling his pipe with the last of his tobacco, James watching the horizon to the north. The notion of Francis Crozier--James cannot bring himself to think of it as the memory of him--hovers between them.

Suddenly, James points at what, in the distance, must be a figure of a man walking, eastwards. "Thomas," he calls, damning himself for leaving the spyglass behind.

Blanky staggers up clinging to James's arm, and together they walk up the black ridge. There, shielding his eyes, Thomas inspects the distant figure. "It's a man," he says. "Netsilik. He doesn't have a sled with him. Must be a camp  of theirs nearby."

They resolve to follow the man to the northeast. Thomas's peg leg has no life left in it: the wood is chipped, and Thomas's knee is red and swollen. But with James's walking stick in his left hand and holding on James's arm with the right, Thomas can walk. They soon manage to set up a tolerable pace. They cannot catch up with the Native man, but a few hours later, they sight the large encampment whence he came.

 

 

Both of them are greeted as guests in the largest tent; there, they are offered fresh water and seal meat, then are welcomed by a young, dark-haired man who introduces himself as Asiajuk. The air smells of the seal blubber burning in the lamp between them. They sit down on pelts and fur. Thomas Blanky translates for them.

"We are searching for our Captain. Your people call him Aglooka. He is walking. North."

Asiajuk maintains on them both his even, unchanging stare. He seems somewhat annoyed, and underneath... something more primal--perhaps frightened, but not by them surely. His answer is quick and curt.

"They saw him," Blanky translates. "Where? When?" he asks.

Asiajuk's words come in a rapid flow this time. Blanky focuses intently on the Netsilik man, concentrating or shocked, James cannot tell. When Asiajuk ceases to speak, Thomas does not translate immediately.

"Thomas," James prompts.

Blanky's demeanour is sombre. "They saw him two full days ago, north of here. He was with a tuunbaq. They didn't approach him."

\--How could he be with the creature? Carried or dragged by it, as prey no doubt?--

"Was he... alive? Wounded?"

Blanky translates. Asiajuk replies quickly.

Blanky frowns, then says, "Not wounded. He was on his feet, but..."

"What?"

"His _anirniq_ was gone. He was a soulless man." Asiajuk adds something. "Not a man," Blanky translates. "Only flesh."

There is then a fate worse than death for them on these plains of rock. Not only can this creature dismember bodies, leaving the soul inside to cry out in pain. It can also remove the soul and leave the body behind. James now imagines Francis Crozier, lying flat on his back, unconscious with his eyes open, like Seaman Pocock, injured during the creature's last attack on them, his body present with the life gone. Mr Bridgens's image of a diary with its pages gone blank leaves a more merciful impression than what must in fact happen when one's life is pulled out of them while they still stand on their feet. What is this, then? A man in body only? And what is such a creature that would devour souls?

James speaks with the raspy voice horror has left him with. "What does he do with it? With Francis's soul?"

After Blanky has spoken, Asiajuk turns to James and speaks to him directly, Thomas translating as he does. "You should return to the other White men and let the tuunbaq have your friend."

Surely, there are many things to blame for this--the exhaustion, the longest and most difficult march of his life, the scurvy, which recedes only a step at a time--but James's eyes line with tears and he is very nearly overcome with grief, then and there. He addresses Asiajuk again. "I want to know what happens with Francis's soul."

Blanky translates James's claim and Asiajuk does not answer. "He might not know," Thomas says.

After a time, Asiajuk speaks at length, softly, addressing James still, giving him the impression he is spoken to like a child. 

"They have a shaman here. If he calls for the tuunbaq, the tuunbaq may come. Then you can see for yourself," Thomas says.

"Francis will be with the creature?"

Thomas shrugs. "May be."

James turns back to Asiajuk. In the mixture of emotions coursing through him, he can hardly tell the pain of grief from the joyful hope to cling to one minuscule possibility of sighting Francis again.

"Please Thomas. Tell him to ask for the shaman to call the creature."

The ice master turns to him, filled with questions and concerns, and also with very many fears of his own, not that he would not face them bravely. "Are you certain?"

James nods. Yes, he will see the creature again. Yes, he will see Francis again.

 

 

The shaman is a short, round-faced man. Like Lady Silence's father and the girl herself, he has no tongue in his mouth and speaks with Asiajuk through a mix of signs and glances. Around them, while the two Netsiliks converse, the remaining families in the camp have begun to take down the tents and pack their belongings and tools in fur pouches, binding them on sleds. The dogs and children sit stiffly through the preparations, somehow aware that an untold danger is coming.

Asiajuk and the shaman discuss at length. Thomas does not need to translate: the shaman is puzzled and reticent. The situation in which Francis has found himself must be quite irregular--should there be regularities of what James must, at least to himself, call  sorcery. Perhaps a Native could have ended up in such a position--haunted, then having his soul devoured by the creature. For a White man to find himself in the same circumstances is visibly an odd and unpredictable thing.

"They're leaving," Thomas observes of the Netsiliks around them.

"When the shaman summons the creature, I suppose they better not be nearby," James says.

"Hm." Thomas munches on his unshaven beard. "I do presume you have a plan?"

"I do."

"Pray tell."

James places his hand on Thomas's shoulder. "You can proceed south with the rest of the camp, Thomas. I'll leave my walking stick with you. You will not be much of a burden. They'll accept your presence. With some luck, you can find our men again at Repulse Bay."

Thomas removes his shoulder from James's grip. "Oh you're not ridding yourself of me. Tell me the damn plan."

Well--James's plan is not yet clear enough to be shared in very many words. "Slay it."

"Excuse me-- _slay it_?"

Francis has died, James explains, throat tying at the decisiveness of his words. With Francis dead, the creature should not live either. The tuunbaq had killed so many of their men as to become indistinguishable from the crushing ice, the burning cold, the polar night squeezing their spirits out of them. A force of nature. He had come to pluck Francis out of their lot and this, James feels he cannot abide at all. This is a personal offence, targeting not their ranks, not their expedition, not their presence here, but something dearer and closer to his heart.

"Vengeance, then?"

"If it may be called thus," James says.

Asiajuk returns. He points to a nearby hillock and speaks.

"The camp will need about a quarter of a day's march to put some miles between them and us. Then, the shaman will call the tuunbaq from that hill. Once the call is made, the shaman will go back to them."

James nods his understanding. Asiajuk comes closer and places a hand on his shoulder. He speaks quietly and, as far as James can comprehend, earnestly. Then he bids Thomas the same and walks away.

"He offered his farewell?..." James ventures.

"His best chances, yes," Thomas says. "He doesn't expect to see us again."

 

 

The shaman waits until the lined sleds are but dots on the horizon to call the creature.

James doesn't understand it. The shaman draws a circle on the ground with a slab of rock. He kneels at its centre and emits what seems somewhat like singing. Coming from his tongueless mouth, it is a muffled and oddly deep sound, more like the echo one feels trembling underneath the skin of a drum than like a human voice. 

The calling lasts for close to an an hour. After, the shaman leaves with nothing more than a nod to them both.

August has brought with it longer dusks. It is when darkness finally comes that they see it. Blanky awaits, poised on a rock. He has his pistol in his belt. James has left his shotgun with him. He has kept no firearm--only the sharp boatknife. He holds it in the sleeve of his fur parka, the leather handle resting against the bone of his wrist.

Blanky spots the creature, his sharp eye catching what seems to James only vapour on the horizon.

It moves fast. Its strides are long.

"As we're going to die, Commander, I'd like a question..." Blanky asks as he readies the shotgun.

"What, Thomas?"

"Was it truly you wrote this fearsome ode on the voyage of the _Cornwallis_?"

James nods, politely astounded that a former whaling captain should be a reader of the _Nautical Magazine_.

In the distance, the creature now creeps. It doesn't come closer yet. It waits.

"Ludicrous work it was."

"Yup," Blanky approves.

As the tuunbaq approaches, James eventually discerns that it does not come alone. It carries Francis Crozier in its jaws.

The horrific sight shakes James from torpor. The turmoil in his chest sets into stone. It becomes pointed outwards, sharp like an arrow. 

"Can't move from this here rock," Blanky tells him. "Run. Let me fire at it. Catch his eye."

"Beware not to catch Francis."

"That's not Francis Crozier," Blanky answers. The body in the creature's mouth hangs like would an empty sail would. A doll without a puppeteer.

With a final nod to Thomas, James leaves. The first strides are difficult on his stiff legs, but they grow warm. James worries not that they should hurt come the next day. He knows that the next day is gone.

He runs.

He runs.

Blanky fires behind him. The creature veers in its arc. It falls into a gallop, heading past James, directly at Thomas Blanky. It roars, the sound bone-chillingly muffled by the body in its mouth.

James feels light as the wind. As he approaches the creature from its side, he glimpses Francis's body, the greying skin, the vacant face.

Francis's voice echoes in his ears. Louder than the creature's snarling. Francis speaks softly, _You are free, hm?_

The tuunbaq is yards from him when it notices their ploy. The ground shakes with its weight as it turns. It twists towards James.

James ducks.

When the creature comes around next, he is ready.

James slips the boatknife from his sleeve and jumps. The knife dives in the fur at the creature's neck, somewhere close to its shoulder.

And all his senses leave him.

In the heavy blackness, he sees--in quick succession, as if he were whirled through a gallery of paintings--glimpses of himself manning the congreves in Terror camp--the hiss and flames of the flying rocket--the smell of burnt flesh and fur. Those are not his own thoughts. They are the tuunbaq's. The creature remembers him, then. James's last thought of his own is, _Yes. Yes, that was I._

 

 

He is on a ship...

\--he knows it by the particular noise of the heels of his boots as they touch the deck's oak. It is _Erebus_. _Erebus_? How could it be? 

Immediately the question surrenders its place to a more crucial one: How could any of this be? For a quick glance down at himself confirms that they are no longer stranded in the Arctic. He wears no fur, but rather his full dress uniform; the wool is taut and new; the epaulets shift as he lifts a hand to the brass buttons on his chest.

The wound--the wound in his left side, the one that aches every morning and every night, the one that nearly killed him. He doesn't feel it any longer. It is gone.

In a blink--it must be a dream, he understands it now--how horrifyingly strange to dream at a time like this--shouldn't this be death? Has he not died?

In a blink--around him _Erebus_ fills with lanterns and chandeliers hanging low from its masts; its bulwarks are draped with velvet; the quarterdeck, where he stands, is home to a semicircle of armchairs. From the topmasts a warm and full wind descends onto deck; a wind--a breeze would be a surer term. This is no Arctic wind.

A servant passes by him, carrying a silver tray with food the like of which James has not seen in so long a time: baked prunes and candied fruits, roast beef and steamed potatoes, glazed chestnuts and Chantilly cream. Yet, James's mouth doesn't water, and his stomach fails to rumble and ache.

This is certainly the strangest dream he's had.

This is _Erebus_ and there is not a flake of snow nor an ice ridge in sight.  
  
"James."

How could--

"How uncanny meeting you here! I didn't know you were appointed to Captain Ross's crew."

Sir John Franklin stands before him. Alive. Not only does he appear most lively, he is also markedly younger--he stands less stoutly, his shoulders are less sloped and the cravat hugs his neck loosely. He is in civil formal dress. His forest green waistcoat betrays Lady Jane's intent. "I..." James's voice catches. I do not know what is this dream, and I have only ever crossed path with Sir James Ross at the opera and in the halls of Somerset House, he very nearly says. "Know that I am entirely pleased to see you, Sir John," he says instead. He speaks most honestly. The last parcel of John Franklin he has sighted was the opaque crimson of his blood at the bottom of the ships' fire hole.

"Well..." Sir John frowns with the air of a man who has just had a queer thought enter his mind. It must not linger for Lady Janes approaches, Miss Sophia Cracroft following her. "Here they are. Darling, this is Commander James Fitzjames. Can you believe I did not know he had been appointed to Captain Ross's crew? For all our time here?"

James bows over the ladies' gloved hands, his head still roiling with the dream.

"Oh," Jane delights. "How have we never before made the acquaintance of such a fine gentleman, dear?"

"Truth be told," Sir John goes on, answering his wife. "It does strike me as strange that officers would be appointed in the middle of an Antarctic expedition, especiall--"

Sir John's puzzlement seems to take a more distinctive shape. He is interrupted by sounds that are very much like gunshots to James's ears. It is fireworks, springing from what must be ground, off the ship's bow. It rings in James with the exact same force as does the word Antarctic. He has never come near being part of this expedition.

Lady Jane, Miss Cracroft and Sir John press with the rest of the crowd to gain a better view of the spectacle. James takes a moment to steady himself. Under a flash of mixed red and yellow in the sky above, he catches a glimpse of himself in a polished golden mirror. His eyes are not sunken. No beads of dry blood appear at his hairline. He is freshly shaven and limedust is gone from his skin.

In passing, an officer brushes against his shoulder. The man apologizes and disappears in the crowd. James has seen this rich auburn hair, pale skin and confident way elsewhere, he realizes. The theatre. This is Sir James Clark Ross.

During a respite of the fireworks, James catches sight of the moonless night sky. Even with the light radiating from the ship, he makes out the constellations--... Alpha crucix. The southern cross. The southern hemisphere. Then this is truly Erebus, and they are on the break of the Ross Antarctic voyage. With Sir John and Lady Jane here, this must be Hobart Town.

Some officers, James sees, leave the ship. They seem to vanish over the gunwales. There must be a bridge of planks and ropes, James understands. He finds it a moment thereafter: a solid affair, built between the two ships-- _Erebus_ and _Terror_.

 _Terror_.

He crosses over to the smaller ship. If this is the Antarctic expedition, he thinks, then Francis... Francis must be here.

As _Erebus_ , _Terror_ is draped in silk. Mirrors disposed on crates reflect the candlelight. The deck appears very much like a banquet room, although the guests have now deserted it. They must have left to watch the fireworks from _Erebus_. Among the wrecks of dining, a mix of officers and gentlemen has stayed behind. There are Lieutenants James does not recognize. Others are in civilian dress, with a naturalist among them, speaking with great esteem and merit of Mr Darwin's voyage on the seas. Francis is nowhere to be seen.

If there are things to be known in dreams, James knows that what he must do now is find Francis Crozier. The command pulls firmly on him.

The ship's decks are kept warm by the temperate climate of these waters. Yet James does not feel at ease there. There is something to those ships which suffocates him.

As he turns to _Terror_ 's bow, a lick of cold reaches his face like an icy exhalation. It brushes his hair, dims the flames of candles.

James follows it.

It leads him off _Terror_ , via a wooden gangway set-up between ship and shore. The bridge is decorated with paper lanterns and exotic flowers which James' bewildered mind cannot name. As he nears the shore, the wood becomes overrun with snow. It seems at first like scattered specs of white dust. By the time the gangway touches ground, it is thickened ice that crunches under his boots.

"Francis," he calls. But a northern wind rises. His voice is swallowed in the gusts.

Behind him, the illuminated ships are soon lost, although the sounds of cellos and happy waltzers come still to his ears.

"Francis!"

It becomes harder to walk. The cold perhaps, or is it life leaving him?

Suddenly, the snow seems to clear. The gale grows nearly silent.

Having appeared as if from thin air, Francis Crozier stands by his side. No longer a voided body, but a man. Like James, he is in full dress uniform. Like James, he is shaved and clean, with no trace of their current ordeal visible on his features.

James loses his voice. He places his hands on Francis's shoulders, gripping him through pressed wool and gilded epaulets. Francis is warm and alive. And his soul is nowhere else than in him certainly, if his stark blue gaze is any indication.

"James," Francis says. "What are you doing here?" he asks. He is not as startled as Sir John. Instead he seems afraid.

"What is this place, Francis?"

"Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land. The day--if there is such a thing--is the 1st of June 1841."

"But how?"

"I... I was brought here," Francis says, "Since the tuunbaq killed me."

James staggers. It is one thing to know Francis has died. It is another to hear it come from Francis's own mouth. Francis takes hold of James to steady him.

"All is well, James," Francis says. "He gave me a choice."

"He?... The creature, you mean?"

Francis nods. "If I give my life, the rest of our men survive. If I do not, all of them die, save for myself. That is what the dreams led me to believe."

While speaking, Francis has furtively looked behind himself. James follows his glance. Its object is a patch of darkness that seems  deeper and stiller than the rest, farther along the Hobartian shore.

"If... if you are here and have died, then if I am here..." James tries to understand what is being said to him.

"You must have died as well," Francis says. He runs a hand through James's hair. "You came after me?"

James nods, his lip quivering with emotion. "How could you believe I would not?"

Francis breaks their gaze, clears his throat of whatever sentiment is lodged there. "Only you, then? Did the others keep on their path east--safely?"

"Only I and Thomas Blanky. I told Edward to take charge of the men. Dr Rae will lead them east, as planned."

Francis nods approvingly at James's account.

"Francis. How long have you been here?"

"I am not aware. Long." He gestures to the ships behind them. "This never ends. The feast, the ball, the fireworks, the waltzes." His eyes search the dark for that same place to which James has seen them drift before. "There is no place for me, here. There never has been. But I was content, that night of 1841."

"And are you? Content, now?"

Francis's expression changes. Shaky resolve becomes despair. The shift is slight, but so undisguised that James's breath catch at the sight. "No," Francis chokes.

James glances around them. His eyes come to the same point where Francis's have stopped.

"What's there?" James asks.  
  
"Tuunbaq," Francis whispers. 

James's gaze does not leave the tuunbaq's den. "Why? Why you, Francis? Why this?"

But Francis has stumbled, as if robbed of all strength. "It is... I must, James. If I don't... The men..."

At James's side, Francis collapses. Has James's arrival disturbed some kind of balance in this inverted world?

The tuunbaq growls--a low and prolonged sound. Drawn by he doesn't know what, James goes to it.

The creature sits on the snow, the waves of the Antarctic ocean lapping up to it. Above them, the sky has turned to black. The ships are gone. So is the ball. This close, the creature seems less and less like a bear. Its face is very nearly human. Its paws are more like a dog's than a bear's. Its eyes are unbearable. It is unlike any animal James has ever encountered, perhaps unlike any man he has ever seen. It is much more than a man, much more than an animal.

"Why Francis?" James asks it. He speaks the way he would to a god or an angel if he should meet any. "Why his soul? What do you want with it"  
  
_Because he is good. With what is good, we can make stars, sea and land_ , the creature answers, saying the words in James's mind.

Beside James, Francis has approached, swaying on unsteady legs. "James, don't..."

"You can't have him," James tells the tuunbaq.

The tuunbaq rises on its hind legs. _Why not?_

James loses no time in contemplation. He finds that the answer to the question comes as easily as air to his lungs. The veracity of it is overwhelming. "His soul is mine. It is not yours to have."

The creature does not answer at that. It bares its teeth instead.

"James..." Francis's voice warns him. It is just in time for James to escape the tuunbaq's bite.

Its teeth close together in a gust of air behind him.

The next attack, however, he cannot avoid.

The creature's jaws close on his hand. The bones crush with a sound like a foot crunching sand. Pain courses through him and he is barely aware of Francis's shouting behind him.

The tuunbaq does not budge. It does not release its hold. Those jaws could easily shake James's arm about, tear it from his body. James stares ahead, his eyes not leaving those of the creature. He has seen this kind of blue before. When the Arctic ocean appeared unfathomably deep. When the dawn shifted seamlessly into dusk on the shortest of the Arctic days.

Not a man, not an animal--this is sea and sky.

Through the pain, James mutters: "My answers... s'the same. You're taking what isn't yours to take."

The creature releases him with a roar. It fills his head.

He goes back to the darkness.

 

 

When he remembers that there should be something like time, it must already have been long. He is falling, and somewhere above there are stars--or are they below?

 

 

The sunlight shines red through his closed eyelids.

He is on his back, yet he is moving. Moving fast. Faster than he could walk.

 

 

He comes to his senses in a tent. Thomas Blanky is holding his left arm and shoulder pinned down. James mumbles a question, before an older Netsilik woman takes from her mouth some green mixture, which she rubs into a wound in his side. Not the Nanking side. A searing burn runs through him, emanating from his right flank.  

"Francis..." he mutters to Blanky, once the most blinding flash of pain has passed. "I saw..."

Above him Thomas grins, broad, proud, happy. He looks pointedly to James's right side.

James turns. Francis is holding down James's right arm and shoulder. He smiles in relief. Tears bead in his eyes. His chin is covered in the first specks of a light red beard.

How? James thinks.

The pain turns into a thicker mud and, again, he's gone.

 

 

James wakes in a bedding of white fur. Francis is sitting at his side. Whole. Himself. His skin is no longer the awful ashen grey the beast's jaws had given it. James's throat is tied. Francis must think it weakness, while James wonders if he is truly awake or in the presence of a ghost. Francis urges him not to speak. "Stay down, James. The tuunbaq caught you with his claws. The gashes run deep along your ribs."

James struggles to reach out to Francis...

He stops just before his hand could touch him.

His right hand is gone. All of it, down to three inches above the wrist. Yet, he feels he could still flex his fingers. Somehow, they're still there. The flesh is swollen. The skin is a heated red. The cut is clean.

Francis wraps a hand delicately around James's mutilated cuff. He sets it back down atop the blanket.

Thomas Blanky walks in. "Tell him of the fight, Thomas," Francis says.

Blanky tells all James cannot recall after sinking his knife in the creature's neck. How the creature seized his knife-brandishing arm in its mouth and shook him off. How James, bloodied, struggled nonetheless. How he crawled to where the creature had set Francis's body down. How the creature slashed James across the chest, then bit off his hand.

"All the while, I'm shooting pellets at it. He doesn't flinch. 'Tis like it tickles him is all. And then..." Blanky's voice trails off.

"What?" James mouths.

"Then... nothing. He got a good look at me. His eye to mine. And he turned around. Walked off. By the time I made it to you both, Francis was breathing. Coughing like a madman."

"How long?" James breathes again.

"How long what, James?" Francis says.

"How long... did the creature's attack last?"

"Time to fire three, four good shots. Not a whole minute," answers Blanky.

Not a whole minute. Yet he had spent minutes certainly, hours perhaps, on _Erebus_ and _Terror_ at their Hobart Town mooring.

It is Francis's bemused frown that worries James most, however. Francis--Francis should remember it... he had been there longer than James. Long, he had said. Days. Perhaps more.

But Francis searches James's face with nothing but perplexity. 

James leans back down. Blanky tells him the rest. The story of the past days which are gone from James's mind. How the shaman had not gone far, bewildered that the White men would try and kill a tuunbaq. How he had come carefully back with two other Esquimaux from the main party. The Natives had wrapped James in furs on a sled after cauterizing the flesh of his severed hand.

And Francis, James asked.

"I remember leaving camp," Francis tells him. He shakes his head in disarray. "Then nothing at all. It is as if I had slept a long sleep."

 

 

A storm keeps them in their tents for three full days. If James's perception of the days' length is correct, August must be near its end now. Winter is coming. Rae must have reached Fort Good Hope. Perhaps on a ship, perhaps camped there on the cliffs.

"The waters at Repulse Bay will have frozen already," James says.

"We'll see. We'll trade what we have for dogs with the Netsilik. Dogs can haul even faster on snow-covered ground," Francis says.

James chews on a piece of seal meat. Francis has returned to himself. Not a shadow is left in him of the darkness that had settled over him when they had first found the slaughtered bear. He seems stronger than James has seen him in months, younger and braver than them all. 

"And if we do not reach Rae at Repulse Bay in time," Francis says, "We'll stay with the Natives. Winter here."

 

 

The snow does help. It covers the ground with one foot of even, smooth terrain. Winds and cold weather flatten it in toughened layers. Soon they are under way, James in a sled, Blanky in another and Francis walking at a good pace at their side. The first day alone they cover thirty miles southeast. In nine days, they sled not merely the distance which James and Blanky have walked to catch up with Francis, but also most of the distance east left between them and Repulse Bay.

They reach the bay at noon under the brightest sun. James's slumber is broken by Blanky's whooping yells. Rae's party is on the shore, encamped at the foot of the tall granite cliffs. They are not alone. A launch sways on the floe-covered waters in the midst of the bay.

A ship moors farther from shore, where the currents and winds have kept the ice from forming.

"A whaler. American," Blanky says.

 

 

The crew of the _Sebastian_ was having a disastrous whaling season. Their hold half-empty, they pushed west into Foxe Basin as far as the ice would let them. They were looking for anything--whale, narwal, even seal or bear. Seeing a fire lit by Rae's party on the northern shore of Repulse Bay, they had thought Natives had settled there. The Sebastians were looking to barter for pelts and inquire where to find a successful hunt. They had discovered instead what remained of the Sir John Franklin's expedition.

The story told by John Rae and Edward Little had brightened their faces. This not only because they were rescuing two lost crews of men. But also because, in the Spring of 1848, the Admiralty had promised a prize of twenty thousand pounds to any crew--British or not--who should bring news of the ships Terror and Erebus and their crews.

Due to favourable winds, Repulse Bay had not yet frozen over. Rae had requested from the Sebastian's captain to wait as long as the  leads allowed it. In the first week of September, it was a risk.

Rae is surprised to see them again. He examines the small party of unlikely survivors with no little puzzlement. They must be quite a sight. Francis, pale and thin, is perhaps yet livelier than when he had left the party. Thomas ambles around with the help of a makeshift crutch. James, deprived of one hand, barely walks. They have a Netsilik escort: the shaman, which has during their journey overland become convinced the three White men were some witless shamans of their own; a hunter and his dogs, as well as the boy the party had met on Montreal island.

As for the rest of the men, they have gone through so much that it would not be fit for them to hold back their tears of relief.

They don't.

 

 

In the upheaval of departure, it is some time before James can find a moment to speak again with Francis concerning the attack of the creature. His sojourn in the Antarctic--however the tuunbaq had contrived the feat--has become burned in his mind just as on  one of Daguerre's silver plates. How come that it was seemingly gone from Francis's mind and present in his own?

Francis's memory appears to improve as time passes. "I recall... your presence. I remember the creature. I remember I was cold. It seems to me to have lasted for a long time, but how long I could not say," Francis tells him as he sits by James's hammock hanging in the sickbay of the Sebastian.

But Francis still recalls none of the Hobart Town ball under the Antarctic sky. None of the guests present there. None of his conversation with James, leading them away from the ships. None of the creature's encounter with them there...

\--and none of what James had spoken that had seemingly convinced the tuunbaq to be off only with his hand and to release its hold on Francis's _anirniq_. His words to the tuunbaq are printed on James's mind as indelibly as the rest.

More singular still, James has no idea why he has spoken them.

 

 

Out of Foxe Basin, they sail due east, south of Baffin Island. Their escape is narrow. They advance among September's thickening new ice. For two terrible days, they remain stuck in a floe half a mile long. The Captain, Joseph Locke, has ceded the ship's largest cabin to his surgeon to use as a sickbay. He has, otherwise, given them all they might possibly desire, life the very first item on that list.

They cross Baffin Bay northeastwards just in time, arriving at an anchorage in Greenland. Behind them, the Arctic's jaws close. Icebergs soon turn into a solid barrier, blocking their way east. Neither Captain Locke nor Francis would risk sailing through pack ice this late in September. Merely to reach Greenland's shore, they must wait for the men to hack a way through the new ice that forms overnight. In an ironic turn of fate, they find themselves a scant few miles west from the bay of Disko. Ashore, tents signal the presence of Esquimaux. This will be a safe place to winter.

James has insisted to be on deck again for their final approach to Greenland's shore. Some of their men are there as well. The sight of land that is almost home is such a warming of the heart that many are overwhelmed again. Henry Peglar, despite fingers lost to frostbite and an arm weakened by scurvy has climbed into the rigging to eye the shore under the careful watch of Mr Bridgens. Neither of them hide their tears.

It is at the stern that Francis remains, however, instead of joining the men at the _Sebastian_ 's bow. To make his way to the quarterdeck, James must accept the arm of Thomas Blanky. The icemaster hops around on his new peg leg. James, whose body has kept an overall stiffness in its right side, leans on him. They progress as slowly and determinedly as the two stubborn invalids they are.

They reach Francis. His gaze is attached to the land they leave. The northern coast of Baffin Island sinks in the mid-afternoon twilight. Far west, clouds gather, loaded with snow.

The bleakness on Francis's brow must be for the men they have lost to the Arctic. There may be concern also for John Rae and his men, who have decided to winter at Fort Good Hope and start in Spring the journey overland.

"You do know 'tis the other way we're going Francis, yes?" Blanky says.

It is a sign of the strength of his friendship with Thomas that Francis's features change quickly to amusement. For James, Francis reserves another gaze where pride meets affection. James would lie if he should deny it is now one of the greatest joys of his life to have Francis's friendship.

Francis offers James his elbow to steady himself. "Should you be on deck?"

"To sight Greenland again? Most assuredly."

Thomas lights his pipe. (The crew of the Sebastian have been so devastatingly happy to know their hunting season salvaged by the prize money for the crews' safe return that they have even turned over some of their tobacco stock to them.) He points to the sky above their heads, where the colour has become dark enough for the brightest stars to appear. "Ursa major," Blanky says. "The great bear. I take it now we know why it's called that."

The remark is not as cheerful as Thomas's usually are. Francis smokes pensively. Except for Francis's and James's conversation on the attack, they have not again spoken of the tuunbaq. Some of the men have no doubt wanted it gone from their memories. James has taken it they should be just as outspoken on the subject as in the note left at Victory Point--speak nothing, for fear of drawing more ships to this ice.

The three of them stay thus until Thomas Jopson comes to request Mr Blanky's presence to assist in loading powder in tins to open a way in the ice.

With Thomas gone, James remains with Francis. His mouth tightens to hide a pained smirk at the flexing of his wounded arm. "Do you still sense the presence of your hand?" Francis asks, worriedly.

"Nearly all of it. Palm and fingers. I could make a fist if only I had one." James huffs. "At this very moment, my fingertips are cold, even though they are lost somewhere in the stomach of the creature, hundred of miles from here."

In answer, Francis bundles James's mutilated wrist more tightly in the fur sleeve.

"I recalled something. Yesterday. Of the time I spent with the tuunbaq."

"What was it?"

"I tried to hold you back. From the creature, as it lurched for you."

"Well--perhaps more memories will come in time."

"Hm." Francis has finished his pipe. He taps the ashes on the gunwale. "You talked to it, before it attacked? In the... dream?"

James's voice is a tad hoarser than he could have wished. He knew this inquiry would come. He intends to face it as best he can, not knowing still how he came to speak what he did "I did. I told him he could not take your soul for it didn't belong to him." He exhales quickly, hoping to quiet his heart. "That, as your friend, I had it attached to mine."

Francis presses James's forearm with his gloved hand at the pledge of companionship. "I've never thanked you, James..."

James stops him. "Don't. Please, Francis."

"My only regret is that saving me you risked the life of a dearest friend." For a blink's time, James thinks Francis speaks of Thomas Blanky--and in some way, his friendship with Francis will never measure with the one Francis shares with Thomas--but Francis's mischievous grin corrects him. "You, James."

A reply comes to James: _The only thing I desired was to have you alive again. That you live is my prize, Francis._ To know that Francis lives. Here or elsewhere. In his company or not.

He does not speak immediately, struck by the rushed quality of his thoughts, flurried in his mind like snow in the wind. They come fast. 

He wanted Francis alive. Knowing that he would walk, drink his tea and smoke his tobacco was a relief beyond all his imagination could provide.

He wanted Francis alive. Knowing that he would dress every morning, sleep in a London bed and wake healthy and rested.

He wanted Francis alive. He wanted to witness Francis living as if he could drink the very substance of him.

He wanted to see Francis pull his waistcoat over his undershirt. Button his cuffs. Shave.

In his room. In his bed.

In James's room. In James's bed.

"James. Are you all right?" Francis's voice rouses him.

"Of course." He clears his throat. "Of course. It's... this cold."

Francis tells him, "Then go back below decks. We will not reach shore tonight."

James shakes his head. "No, please. I would like to remain a few moments more. Here."

Francis nods and they return to their star-gazing. Ursa major has appeared in full now above their heads, although it would soon be overcome by the coming clouds. His affections have not manifested themselves to James in this manner for years now. He had thought them a thing of his youth.

He is inwardly sorry for his lie to Francis. For he is not cold. Not cold at all.

This lie will doubtlessly be the first of many, for it could not be farther from his mind to let himself be seen by Francis in this particular penchant. And why indeed would he? To risk losing the bond they now share? No. James cannot fathom it. 

Relishing with new delight in the indirect contact of Francis's arm on his, James looks up at the Ursa major. Silently, he swears to preserve his bond with Francis. And to keep his--oh Lord, it would be called love wouldn't it?--to keep his love from Francis's perception at all cost. If it is to be his fate that he should keep always at least one secret about himself, then so be it.

The stars above seem to blink at him. James would have thought it an omen if it were not surely a trick of his eye. A tingling pain runs through his right arm to the tips of his absent fingers.

Beside him, Francis fills another pipe. "Do you recall when first you took on this habit? Tobacco?" James asks him.

"For ever I remember my father smoking a pipe. I had one in my mouth even when I walked cows to meadows barefoot. You've never had the taste for it?"

"I'm afraid not. But I must confess it has grown on me as of late..."

No more word from James is needed. Francis offers him his filled pipe.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for all the things that must be off with my geography. apologies also for how long this took.


	5. June 1849: Elizabeth Coningham

The 17th of March 1849, on the whaler _Sebastian_ , off the southern shore of Greenland,

Dearest Elizabeth,

I trust you and our dear William have by now received news of our safe passage through Baffin Bay. The ice, however, has forced us to winter near the bay of Disko, wherefrom I sent my last correspondence, three years and nine months ago. The American whaling ship having picked us up, the _Sebastian_ , has been safely tied ashore in the inlet here. Her crew and her Captain (a fully-bearded and quite round man by the name of Joseph Locke) lack all unhappiness that the return to England with a hold empty of whale oil and blubber would have brought them--for a generous prize has been announced for those gentlemen who'd favour our return home to London. It serves us right since, as of our arrival and setting-up for winter here, the Sebastians treat us like most honoured guests and have helped us in a manner beyond our hopes.

You know I cannot be but truthful with you. Our expedition has been most unfortunate. We return now with a mere fourth of our number of men, and having failed on our intent and mission--and having lost our Commander, Sir John Franklin in our second year frozen-in, as well as our ships. We quite mourned Sir John, a skilled commander and strong leader of men, and then the loss of our ships: when we know by heart their timbers and rooms, it is no mystery that we should call them our homes. Most of our officers and men bear wounds: it is quite a war we have waged against the Arctic cold and ice. Our victory, if it is to be called by that name, is the one of Pyrrhus, and I long most in my return for a chance to communicate to the Admiralty and Kingdom how it should want to improve their paths in these treacherous islands. We have found here but shallow waters and lifeless plains of limestone and, although that will cause Sir John Barrow a deep melancholy, no naval passage for Her Majesty's vessels. 

The days here are long and the duty of myself and the other officers is to keep the men occupied with various tasks. Some of them having recovered from our ordeal on the ships and the ice of the Arctic were anxious to be on safe land again. Having just arrived on Greenland's shores, however, they found it quite derelict: there is no-one here but for a Esquimaux village where the Natives have remained wary of us. Altogether there is not much to attend to for men like ourselves. The material for our wintering school having perished with our ships, Mr Bridgens has taken to instruct men in the handful of books of his that have survived our expedition. Since the crew, having lost many of their friends, are in no mood to be entertained with plays and games, my fellow Captain, Francis Crozier, and myself have fancied magnetic experiments for them to perform, and they have so far relished in their duties, as long as it keeps their hands and feet busy and warm. I would be at fault if I told you that this ennui has left me untouched: I have finally taken up the frightful habit you and William find the mark of a true sailor--pipe and tobacco have taken their hold on me and I find I quite enjoy the taste.

I have before in my letters told you little of Francis Crozier. It was out of ignorance and I can only now hope to repair this fault by telling you a few words of this remarkable man. I did not fancy him when I encountered him but now, by some twisting of fate's strands, he has become my closest friend among these men and officers. You would enjoy perhaps his reserved nature and the honesty of his speech, and William certainly would find much to share in Francis's intuitive distrust of those he suspects of abusing their situations. Francis is entirely unlike any friend I have ever loved. I could not paint an appropriate picture of him without also telling you much about myself which I have discovered at his contact. All this winter through I have gone with him on walks on the deck of our ships, his elbow at mine, and from bow to stern and from aft to fore we went, and yet there is much of him that still astounds me, as if the becoming of our friendship was recent and new. As a Navy man I have certainly failed in my occupations here, but I would also have failed as a man had I not become Francis's friend.

It is most difficult to imagine faithfully what our life in England will again be when we find ourselves here in the frosted scapes of Greenland. But I think it reasonable that my stay in the Royal Navy could soon end. Scurvy has left me some scars which do not befit one who sails ships--and I am,  contrarily to some peers of the Admiralty, fond of ships and sea as you know. Before your eyes proceed to the next lines, please keep calm, for I assure you all is well, and quieten the worries that I know you and William will entertain. I have lost a hand, the right one, and part of the arm. I have been in the past most fortunate in my endeavours on sea and land: and I have enjoyed that luck for how long it's lasted, but it has ended now. I find the writing most difficult of all with the left hand, which feels clunky like a piece of wood. This message will show you what has been the extent of my progress in learning my letters anew and what progress remains to be made by me in these matters. I have nothing in my heart but love for you and William and longing to be again in your company.

Our return depends much on the whims of weather and sea--we will be in London in July at the earliest and October at the latest. My letter, I entrust to Native hunters who will travel on foot to the eastern shore of Greenland. They have promised to deliver our correspondence to the first British ship they encounter in open water. It may reach you only days before I return to London in the flesh. I have thought much of both of you in these restful days and these thoughts have filled me with love for you and chagrin to be away from you. You must please kiss and embrace tightly Willie and Bessie and tell them that their uncle has kept them dearly in his memory.

Js. Fitzjames  



	6. August 1849: Francis

 

 

* * *

 

On the deck of the _Sebastian_ , a mere hundred miles from Iceland's shores, Francis Crozier inhales. The smoke runs its path down his lungs, granting him its customary sliver of ease. Then he exhales in the warm summer air. The cloud of smoke rushes to the horizon.  
  
Near the line that signals the vanishing point where sea meets sky, a flicker of pale light captures his attention. He is a sailor. He knows as he reaches for his glass he has just sighted a sail. Although perhaps has the keel of the ship not yet come over the horizon.

He sets the glass to his eye. A hundred feet above him, in the crow's nest of the _Sebastian_ , a cry comes for Captain Locke. But Francis has seen her already.

A ship. Likely some reformed merchant vessel, taller and heavier than the _Sebastian_. Flying English colours.

Joseph Locke comes down from the quarterdeck to where Francis stands, at the larboard gunwale, his eye still attached to his glass. "An English ship. Someone you know?"

It waits on Francis's tongue: something like _English, yes. Friend, perhaps_. He nods and says, "News of our return must have reached England by now. Perhaps an escort was sent to recover us."

Not that any recovery is needed. They are no burden for Captain Locke. Francis's men have at this point mingled with the _Sebastian_ 's crew. Some of them are in the rigging, others are below decks, carpentering, caulking, cooking. Men, Francis knows, and especially those who have known what they have known, cannot possibly be left idle. Their own dreams would be their end.

"Hoist our colours. Fetch the flagbox. Ready for signalling," Locke tells his master.

Francis collapses his glass. Behind him, steps he knows well approach. The uneven thud of heels on wood speaks of the rigid leg scurvy has left behind, the pause between the landings of feet tells of the long strides of once agile limbs. In a moment, James Fitzjames is beside him. He rests his walking stick--a smooth, dark piece of wood he uses like the most gentlemanly cane--against the gunwale and takes his pipe and tobacco from his pocket. He is joining Francis for their morning ritual, acquired in the past months: a pipe with the last bell of morning watch.

As news of the incoming ship has spread through the masts, rigging and decks like wildfire, James trades his usual "Morning Francis" for "English?" to which Francis nods.

"Navy?" James pursues.

"No telling as of yet."

Francis has muttered it between his teeth despite himself. James's brief nibbling at his cheek tells him he must look grimmer than he thinks.

"I thought we had time still," Francis explains. "Before..."

"Before what? Our return?"

"Before England."

James nods. His understanding with Francis is such that he needs not to voice it at all. They have both ceased to think of England as their home some point north of the Arctic circle. For Francis, it was in the throes of his weaning off spirits that he had finally known that, no matter how much he tried, he would never be English. For James, it was when he searched the burnt faces of bodies for traces of who these men had been, wearing still the red drapes of Britannia. But for both of them to recognize this in the other, it had taken their lonely mission to Victory Point's cairn, one fateful day of April 1848.

James puffs at his pipe. He has grown skilled at the thing--and now he is blowing rings of blue smoke in the morning breeze. "And that ship brings the whole of England with it?" he asks, keen to shift Francis's dismal mood on other, farther objects.

"Not the whole of it," Francis grants. On board the approaching vessel there is surely no Admiralty council, or the court martial; nor the balls or receptions; nor Lady Franklin. Nor Sophia Cracroft. Sailing away never succeeded in making him ill to his stomach as sailing home did. At some moment in what he thinks of now as his past life, he had believed that returning home a hero would untangle the knot.

It does not.

"Cease your fretting, then. Come down," James says, elbowing Francis's side with his right, mutilated arm. "There's time enough for bread and tea before she signals her intentions."

With James finishing his pipe, Francis relents and follows him below decks for breakfast. James has long since refused Francis's assistance in walking or moving about on ship. Francis has grown used to feeling the other man's weight on his arm as they paced the deck this winter--at times, he still feels it at his elbow. Long, long nights they were under the dark sky and the thin awning spread from masts to gunwales. And during all this endless thread of day and night, not once has Francis managed to recall an image, nor a sound, nor a whimper, nor a flash--nothing--of his rescue at James's hands. Every time he thinks of it, all he recalls is leaving camp--the raging storm--some flash of foreign night sky--and breathing in with the air like fire in his throat with Thomas Blanky shaking him in the most earnest effort--with James beside him on the shale; pale, and clinging to his bleeding arm.

What he does remember of James Fitzjames is having hit him on the jaw with his fist, months past. It never ceases to astound him--how his mind should choose to remember his greatest mistake regarding this man--and forget all that Francis owes him most.

Before heading down, he peers at the horizon again. He can spot the ship easily now. No need for his glass. She is coming closer--and rapidly. There is no mistake. She is heading straight for them.

 

 

News arrives quickly.

Captain Locke comes to find Francis and his officers in their small mess: two planks laid on two whale-oil barrels, around which his men, officers or not, sit on crates or benches. They have no walls around them like they did on _Terror_ and _Erebus_. None of them has a cabin of their own, nor a berth. They sleep in hammocks like midshipmen. It was quite the sight to see James or Thomas attempt to settle themselves in their canvas nest with their stiff legs--several unholy words were used.

The Royal Navy ship has signalled. Locke has written the message down on a piece of paper. He gives it to Francis with the comradely air he has always managed to keep. It would have been easy for him to act as if Francis was not a Captain. Yet he has never done so.

Around Francis, the men assembled are quiet. There is a tension in the air, not unlike the one before departure from the docks. None of them know what to expect.

Francis reads aloud: "HMS _Enterprise_ sent to meet the _Sebastian_ on her eastward journey to England. Her Captain, Sir James Clark Ross, wishes to board. He especially wants to speak with the crew of Sir John Franklin's expedition."

The silence that follows is slightly different from the one that preceded his words. The men know what to expect now. And yet they don't. It is as if they cannot believe it. Their return home is right there, a flimsy piece of paper in the hand of Captain Francis Crozier. 

There is no telling where it starts. One of the men--it may well have been Edward Little--begins to laugh--there is not an ounce of bitterness, not an atom of despondency to it. The triumphant cry grows louder and louder. Jopson's own laugh starts quietly, like he attempts to hide it in his collar. When Edward's hand lands on his shoulder to shake him in shared joy, it bursts open and loud. Soon, all of the men rejoice. Thomas Blanky draws Francis close, saying something in his ear about never being so bloody happy to see a damn Navy ship in his torn-arse life.

Francis smiles in Blanky's embrace. At the other hand of the table, James has an arm around Le Vesconte. Even Henry has abandoned his usual silence to join the men in their impromptu celebration: he laughs open-heartedly, with tears in his eyes.

James, at Henry's side, remains quiet.

So does he, Francis realizes.

 

 

James Ross comes aboard the _Sebastian_ and two worlds meet. On the deck of the _Sebastian_ , the whalers have stopped manning sails, cleaning decks or moving crates. They stand at attention, the looseness of their posture betraying that they are not naval men, but nonetheless giving as good an approximation of discipline as they can manage. They are a savage lot, dressed in rags, the Arctic winter having tanned their faces with frostbite. Opposite them, Ross and his men--two Lieutenants in their rosy-cheeked prime, six tough sailors and two marines, all of them with pristine uniforms--climb on deck with a decisive step. It is a chilly day and a light autumn snow falls: it dots the dark blue wool of the navy men's greatcoats and the officers' hats with specks of white.

Between them, Francis stands with twelve of his surviving men. If anything, they appear more savage than the American whalers. They wear not wool or naval rags but fur; their faces are scarred by the cold and hidden in beards; their eyes--their eyes have most changed--there is an unknown fierceness encroached in their gaze.

At his right side, James clears his throat lightly at Francis.

Francis unclenches his jaw.

How clearly he recalls James's words--it is eerie--"a gilded life" indeed.

In three steps, Ross is before him. The exchange of salutes lasts only the briefest moment. Then Ross seizes Francis in a strong, brotherly hug.

"Sweet Lord, Frank," Francis hears against his shoulder. He closes his eyes and--as he has countless times since the _Enterprise_ has been sighted--waits for the rush of it to get to him. This sentiment. This relief, this ease, this utter _joy_ \--home. England. Home.

Nothing.

Ross pulls back and holds him at arms' length, frowning openly at the whole of Francis Crozier: bearded, hatless, dressed in sealfur (and looking now a lot more like his father than at the time of their departure, Francis thinks). "Dear Lord, you're here," Ross says again.

"I am," Francis says.

Still, he waits for it. Still nothing.

He steps back. "Commander Fitzjames," he introduces. "Sir James Clark Ross."

James offers his left hand for Ross to shake, keeping his right arm and its folded and sewn sleeve deliberately in sight. "Sir James. We have met over punch and turtle soup at Somerset house. It does seem decades ago, I confess."

Ross shakes the hand warmly. "We have and time has grown long. Much too long. And--I wish circumstances were different for such announcement--it is _Captain_ Fitzjames since 1846."

A faint blush of pride reaches James's cheeks, fainter than Francis would have expected in previous times. Nonetheless, Francis feels an echo of it in his own chest.

"It's an honour, Sir James," James says.

Then, things go about in a blur. Francis introduces Ross to all three surviving officers, Edward, Henry and Thomas. "How many men have you now? Did your letter speak truly--thirty-four?" Francis nods: "Thirty-four." Ross winces. He squeezes Francis's arm. Ross brings comfort for them, he says. Advancement letters--most are for dead men, save for James and Henry. Bright and new Navy uniforms for all of them. Coats, boots, hats, even pistols, glasses and epaulets, in silk-festooned chests. Crates of fresh meat and cooked vegetables to supply the officers with a "dignified, English dinner, here on board the Sebastian". And, Ross says it with a conspiratorial glance, "a few bottles" of the best whiskey, straight from Dublin's distillery.

Francis swallows. He nods and smiles. He dares not say that he will hand the crate of bottles over to the Sebastians to share. His friend would think him mad, surely.

And still--nothing.

 

 

Ross has brought all necessities with him for a dinner such as the men formerly of _Erebus_ and _Terror_ have not known in years.  As the sun sets, the _Enterprise_ and the _Sebastian_ anchor near the western coast of Iceland in the Faxafloi Bay. The wind wipes the sea and the swells go deep. The horizon dives below then shoots above the windows in Captain Locke's stern cabin, which whalers have begun to turn into a large mess for the naval men to dine. Francis observes their preparations only to distract himself in his utter uselessness in the proceedings.

James Ross is on deck with Edward Little and the _Sebastian_ 's second, supervising the storage of crates of tea and tobacco the _Enterprise_ brought them. Francis insisted that the whalers obtain at least equal a share to the one imparted to his men.

The large table for the officers' dinner will be rudimentary work: wood planks from the hold laid on whale oil barrels, joined together and covered with canvas for a tablecloth. Francis nods a last, useless nod at a carpenter's mate, passing with joints and rivets, before he surrenders. He heads to the fore where his men have their quarters: stowed hammocks, with sea chests for seats and crates for tables, and, larboard, a linen curtain for the officers' privacy.

He finds James there. His new Captain's uniform hangs on a peg beside him, epaulets attached and glimmering in the lamp light. James is leaning over the basin with his parka removed and clad in only an undershirt and waistcoat. His motions are slow and seem dangerously precarious--it takes a moment and a squint for Francis to understand that James is shaving.

Using his left hand. Amid their vessel's heavy pitching.

Francis barely has time to open his mouth to voice his concerned astonishment--which would probably have come out with a curseword or two. James says, "Am almost finished." He says it off-handedly, as if Francis had walked in to inquire if he could help himself to the basin and water as well. But James's arched brow at Francis in the mirror conveys his attempted reassurance.

A reassurance of which Francis feels near to naught.

Instead, he sits on a nearby crate and, to set his gaze and mind to something, ends up inspecting James's uniform. The pressed wool is rough under the touch, and the blue appears much darker than in Francis's recollection. Must be the amber flame from the lamp. Merely from the look of it too, Francis can tell the coat will be slightly too large for James's lank frame.

"Uncanny, is it not?" James says, of his new uniform. With his shave done, he looks different than he has in, well, perhaps a year. Francis did not recall the line of his jaw detaching so sharply, nor that his chin advanced so far from the neck. Yet he does not look at all like the James Fitzjames he remembers from their early voyage--although he cannot place exactly how this one differs. If anything, Francis thinks this James appears older, with a changed glint to his eye.

James dries his naked cheeks with the linen cloth. His glance at Francis above the uniform confirms to him that the new brass buttons and gilded epaulets are not the only uncanny thing on James's mind.

"It is not to my knowledge naval protocol to send an escort to recovered expeditions," James adds, purposefully.

It is one of James's keen talents--to spell out in graceful words the worries which Francis perceives only as the push and shove of wind, invisible but effective. Francis gives an appreciative hum. "Protocol can be arcane in its ways. You're asking the wrong man about its intricacies," he says.

"Hm," James nods. "A patriotic affair it must be, then. Surely the Admiralty could not have us return in England on an American vessel."

It has been a year: James has become expert at going through the daily motions of life with his missing limb. After some initial fidgeting, he buttons his uniform coat swiftly with the play of his left thumb and fingers. He finds he cannot tie the black silk cravat on his own, however.

This, Francis helps him with.

It must make one somewhat nervous, Francis understands--to have another man's fingers and hands so close to one's throat. Even after all they have shared. It must be why James's eyes cannot truly settle while Francis laces the first knot.

"Perhaps we can inquire with Sir James about his mission here?" James asks.

"Anyone could have led this escort--why send a peer of the Admiralty?" Francis approves. He nods at James's chin: "Up." He tucks the silk back below the collar, and nods at James that it is done. "Perhaps he volunteered."

"Or this could be Lady Jane's workings," James offers, pinning the right sleeve of his greatcoat closed below the elbow.

They stand opposite now in the tight space meant for only one man to move about. Francis still bearded, still fur-wearing--and James, clad in naval blue and Admiralty gold.

James smirks down at his coat. Cranes his neck. "Feels awfully stiff."

"You'll get used to it," Francis says softly.

"We'll get used to it." Then, "What is it, Francis?"

"James is my friend," Francis says. "Yet, I look at him and all I see is--England."

James flexes his good hand. The dress uniform came with gloves. He shall only use one. "Perhaps it is like a spent muscle. Give it time to regain its strength. You may well recover your friend then."

Then, as he shifts his right shoulder, James winces.

"Is Nelson again in a foul mood?"

"Quite," James says.

The sound of boots on wood draws nearer. Edward's and Thomas's voices accompany them.

James leaves the room to Francis to shave and dress.

 

 

Dinner on the _Sebastian_ starts with a prayer for Sir John.

In his one letter to the Admiralty, which trusted Eskimo hunters had carried overland to the Eastern shore of Greenland and then handed to a Finnish ship, Francis had made official record of his perjury: that Sir John Franklin had been killed by a bear during a tragic hunting party. He had consulted James, then the officers. All had agreed with his reasoning. Yet, fabrications, even of the polite kind--or perhaps especially that--have never suited him: he is relieved Ross does not have him recount the fallacious tale now.

For this dinner, as it starts, is already otherworldly. Odd, is the way his naked cheeks and jaw, freshly shaved, feel the warmth of the air. Strange is the taste and sight of the civilized meal on his plate. And James was right: the collar of his uniform suffocates him.

He tells himself that habituation will find its way. 

And yet.

"Now, I insist to know--what is this Nelson business?" Ross asks, after James has recounted to Edward Little what a "useless bore Nelson was to put on a naval uniform", drawing chuckles from the men.

"Why, Sir James, it is the name of my lost hand," James says in the most stately manner possible.

Ross blinks.

"Pardon?" 

Francis cannot help but grin widely at his friend's incredulity. The rest of his men at the table--Edward, Henry, Thomas, Blanky--are more discreet than he and wear tight-lipped smiles.

Ross turns to Francis disbelievingly. Francis arches his brow to say _'Tis the very truth_.

"We're not jesting you, Sir James," Blanky says. "Captain Fitzjames and I felt that these limbs of ours--my leg and his arm--had done the Royal Navy great service. So we thought we might as well give them Christian names."

James's seriousness has begun to break at the eyes, revealing his intent, but it must be visible solely to Francis. "Let me thus introduce Lord Nelson," he exhibits his shortened right arm in its pinned uniform sleeve.

"And this here--" Blanky gets up from his seat and taps his wooden leg with his cane "--is Admiral Gordon."

Ross turns to Francis again, his eyes asking _This is madness, surely?_

Francis stares back evenly _._

Wide smiles now reign on the men's faces: they know James's and Blanky's collaborative jibing and it is pleasant to see their elaborate quips prey on unknowing newcomers.

James goes on. "Now these names, the Lord bless their bearers, were not haphazardly chosen. Lord Nelson who was a man of courage, persistence and bravery is much like my lost arm--it persists in hurting me, whom it takes for an enemy, even though hand and fingers are now gone. And all my efforts to tame it are vain--as were the Spaniards' and Frenchmen's efforts to vanquish Nelson."

"In comparison, Admiral Gordon is a much more ordinary creature. Oh, he's brave alright. He'll stand his ground and he has his moods, and specially when the skies cloud and the sea heaves, he'll make me slip and twist. But he's a nice lad and we've fashioned some kind of peace between us," Blanky recounts, chewing on his unlit pipe.

Edward cannot hold back his laughter.

James's face wears its customary grin now, with a tad of triumphing pride on his brow. He turns it at Ross. "You see, Sir James, limbs lost in battle are much like heroes in some regard, enduring in our memory. The flesh must possess a memory of its own and frequently reminds us of what it lost. Mr Blanky and myself have thus decided to honour our limbs properly, hoping--entirely in vain, might I had--to curb their contrary tendencies."

Ross has never had Francis's quick temper and gradually, the men's laugh reaches and possesses him. Ross picks up on them and raises his glass. "To the most honourable Lord Nelson and Admiral Gordon."

As the _Enterprise_ 's officers follow their commander with stunned slowness, Francis's men--and himself, he discovers--voice a loud hurrah.

 

 

Nothing is as efficient as humour to bond men. This talent, Francis has never had. Yet, thanks to James, and Blanky, and even Thomas, Edward and Henry joining, supper passes in a blur.

But some conversations must be had and some words spoken.

This becomes obvious when Ross invites he and James for pipes and brandy on the quarterdeck.

Captain Locke, ever the tactful host, orders the quarterdeck cleared. A Navy steward waits, holding a silver platter of tea and brandy. Save for him and the master manning the wheel, they stand in relative privacy. To make sure their voices carry not to the deck of the ship, they turn their backs on the men and face the sea astern.

For he must sense Francis's apprehension, James begins--most diplomatically. "A long voyage for the _Enterprise_ , it must have been, Sir James. To sail all the way from England and find us here. It was pleasant, I trust?"

"Yes, very pleasant. No exertion at all. The Admiralty is most keen to see the Franklin expedition return intact," Ross says.

Ross's emphasis on the Admiralty's keenness is perceptible and James takes note, chewing pensively on his cheek. "Surely, the Admiralty has no false hopes about... how intact these men are?" he says.

Ross nods. They return, after all, with a fourth of their men--this, the Admiralty does know. What they may not know in full yet is with what story they return: a treacherous channel of ice to the west of King William Island, a passage to the south of this island yes, but only possibly sailable by naval vessels, a devastating scurvy epidemic, contaminated stores--and what Francis has described in his letter as the most aggressive kind of white bears any Englishman had encountered to date. Many things he could not include in his account. One of the most prominent is his very intense wish to deter any other expeditions to this area of the world.

He has a clear sense now they have not escaped the tuunbaq so much as it is the creature who has let them go. Others shall not be so lucky.

Ross ponders. His face is unreadable, Francis notes with a strange pinching of his heart. It used to be as open to him as his own.

"Francis and yourself have nothing to fear from court martial. I shall make certain of it," Ross says, thinking James was asking out of self-preservation. Even then, Ross's slight insistence on Francis's name and his tone--stricter than meaning required--put an irrevocable end to James's attempts at diplomacy.

Francis needs not to glance at James to know his face has turned to stone-like stillness.

"Why are you here?" Francis asks Ross. "Have the tensions between England and the American colonies increased so that we cannot be escorted back on an American ship? Or is there another concern?"

Ross seems to think the matter over some more. Wherever his thoughts lead him, they do not chase the seriousness from his brow. 

"Captain Fitzjames, shall you excuse us?" Ross says.

James's look at Francis is understanding and he opens his mouth to comply. Yet Francis hears himself say, "No." He clears his throat while Ross's brow draws an arch. "No. James has been with me every moment of this journey. Here is where he belongs."

It takes a moment for Ross to recover. Then he says, "I'll speak as plainly as I may then. It was not the Admiralty who most insisted to have me sent on a ship to recover you and your men."

This, Francis did not expect. "Not the Admiralty? Then who?" he asks.

James seems less surprised. "It was Lady Jane, was it not?"

Ross seems relieved at the mention of the name. "It was," he admits. "Since John Barrow's death last year, the Admiralty has much changed. Parliament has new preoccupations and the days of the Discovery Service may be numbered. Lady Jane petitioned that an American ship should not be the one to bring the heroes of the Arctic back home." Francis fears he has visibly shuddered at the words 'heroes of the Arctic'. "She is... as she has ever been. It took all my might to persuade her not to join us on the _Enterprise_."

"And why would she have wanted this?"

"She wants to ensure that Sir John's memory is done no... fault. That he is acknowledged his dues," Ross says.

"Let me venture a guess," James says. "You have been tasked with... inquiring with us concerning Sir John's fate, have you not?"

It is no surprise when Ross nods.

Some peace settles in Francis's soul at this, most strangely. He feared Lady Jane would question the facts his letter had reported--and his letter being but a sober, civilized recollection of the events, he wondered what she would have thought had she known the entire truth in its crudest form. Most of his fear, he realizes, was that he would have to face her interrogations in one of the dreadful, rich rooms of the Franklins' house. Yet another place which he had thought of as his home and which wasn't. It is some comfort that a portion of the questioning will take place here. Furthermore, a secret hope sprouts in Francis's breast that once the questions have passed, he will recover his friend in James Ross as he once was.

"Ask your questions then James," he tells Ross.

Ross nods and gestures for brandy. The steward begins pouring glasses for all three of them.

"Tea, if you please," Francis says.

"Tea?" Ross says. "Nonsense. Sir, what stranger are you and what have you done with Francis Crozier?"

Francis's refusal of port had been little noticed during dinner. But this he cannot avoid. Perhaps it is better this way, perhaps James Ross will now know how much things have changed. Francis had always enjoyed his drink. During long voyages, whiskey reminded him of Ireland in a way that did not include memories of his father.

The Antarctic voyage had changed all things. At some point, facing walls of ice that made their ships seem tiny, lost in the eternal nights of darkness and with little company as Captains, he and James Ross had bonded more strongly than ever Francis had believed possible. The whiskey helped them steady their hands--a Captain cannot for the sake of the Lord peer at the horizon through his glass with his hands shaking as leaves in a breeze. By the time Francis and Ross returned to Hobart Town, they realized neither sleep nor clear thoughts would come to them without it. They had both promptly exchanged their personal stores for crates of the stuff.

Underneath his cheerful tone, Ross's eyes sting with betrayal. So much that Francis says, "Peace, James." He takes a glass of brandy from the steward's platter and places it in Ross's hand, then he takes a tea cup for himself. He searches for apt words and decides for the simplest ones. They happen to be the most honest he can find. "Whiskey ran out in the last months of 1847," he says. It takes a sip of brandy for understanding to cross Ross's features, along with a quickly masked shade of horror at the thought. He stares at James who blinks in silent assent. "The men saw me through it. I would rather perish than put anyone else, including myself, through it again. So--" he lifts his cup in a mock salute, "tea it shall be."

Ross swallows. In the years Francis has known him, he has never seen James Ross eye so suspiciously a drink in his hand as he does now. "Do you even fathom, Francis, my admiration for you? And here I was thinking it could not be increased by a sliver..."

A reassuring warmth spreads through Francis. James Ross is his friend again. 

Yet none of this is home.

To set order in his thoughts, he says, "You better ask your questions now, before the next watch starts."

"Alright," Ross agrees. "With the toughest hardship first then. Sir John's death. The bear's attack. How did it take place?"

Francis lifts his eyes to James. He has followed the exchange between Ross and he in respectful silence, taking minute sips of his brandy to warm up in the night's breeze. "Neither of us witnessed it, although I was more closely involved than Francis," he starts.

And Francis shuts his eyes as James recounts the day of June the 11th, 1847.

 

 

It is truly for the best that James Ross met the _Sebastian_ at that point in the middle of the Atlantic. Ross brought England over to Francis Crozier then. Hence it is no surprise that Francis does not feel at home when they sight the shores of England again.

He does not feel at home anywhere it seems--and so much so that he feels pained to leave the oak, cloth and lines of the _Enterprise_ behind to step onto the solid pavement of the Deptford docks. He has never felt at home in Somerset House or at White Hall. It is only more salient now. London is not home either, with its busy streets, both dark and light.

Francis wonders fleetingly if Banbridge will feel somewhat like home. It had been home for a long time and hope pulls at a string within him to return there. But what for? It would be solely to verify that homeliness has not vanished from his breast. That he did not leave it in the Arctic, in the jaws of the creature he only dimly recalls carrying him.

The only thing stranger than not feeling like returning home is the fact that he enters now the country of this Earth he knows the least: the one of glory and praise. At White Hall, George Barrow, the unofficial acting secretary of the Admiralty since the death of his father, shakes Francis's hand. His grasp has the firmness of admiration.

Francis has barely met the Barrows before and he is certain they know almost nothing of his name. 

 

 

The irony is not lost on him that this fame comes to him from the shadow of Sir John Franklin. Lady Jane's grief over the death of her husband finds itself inextricably mixed with the pride and joy of seeing her husband's true might finally appraised. It creates in her a teary ecstasy. Welcoming Francis and James in the Franklins' London house, she calls Francis "the most loyal friend" of her late husband and presses his hands in hers. He cannot bring himself to smile. For a moment, her eye flickers with their shared knowledge of a past enmity. But then she turns to James and gives him a heartfelt welcome.

His eyes dart around the lonely and vast hall of the house. He pauses to listen for steps and when a maid passes by carrying roses and carnations to refresh the dinner table, his heart grows heavy--for a second, he has mistaken her for Sophia.

Nonetheless, it takes James's inquiry to shake him out of his waiting torpor. "But surely, Miss Cracroft has shared thus far the anguish with you, Lady Jane? Might we not offer her our condolences on her uncle's passing as well?"

"Oh, Sophia--the darling thing--has just returned from France. She accompanied me there. We were garnering support to finance a further expedition."

"A further expedition?" Francis asks. "Where to?"

"Why--to the Arctic. To recover the remains of those poor men having met their end there. They cannot possibly be left..."

She does not finish her thought, but the wrinkled frown of her brow speaks loudly. They cannot be left with the heathens and savages.

"Miss Cracroft is resting from her travels, then?" Francis asks. The words feel improper in his mouth. His thoughts are stranded on the scree and shale beaches of King William Island where Lady Silence and her people, it is certain, have not seen the last of England.

"Yes, yes," Lady Jane says. "We returned only last night. But I am certain she would be delighted to see you, dear Francis."

 _Dear Francis_. He would never have dreamed of hearing such things from Lady Jane's mouth. "No need," he assures. "I am sure the journey requires rest."

He is not the only one surprised by his words. Lady Jane's eyes widen. She slowly drops the hand she had lifted to catch the gaze of a maid. James's puzzled gaze questions him for a moment, then he says, "She will join us for dinner then?"

"Of course, of course," Lady Jane agrees.

 

 

When Sophia does join them in the dining room, she appears as beautiful as ever. She wears grey satin and pearls and reminds Francis of the light of dawn. Her smile is warm for all three of them, yet her eyes once catch Francis's with eagerness in them.

She is not what worries Francis. What worries him happens in his breast.

Whenever he saw Sophia before, his heart would start aflutter. It was not the rapid, marching beats that poets spoke of. It was like a wounded bird, one with a broken wing, struggling on the ground, flapping its one wing with all its force. A trapped bird in his chest is how it felt to lay eyes on Miss Cracroft. He was so entirely at a loss when it had first occurred, at a crowded reception in Hobart Town, it had taken James Ross's jesting to remind him that this was love.

Nothing of the sort happens now.

He meets Sophia's gaze over the candles, then stares back at his soup.

Not that he is unhappy to meet her again. He welcomes her company, much like he would the one of a close, very close friend. Possibly the closest he has at this table--if not for James.

The flutter is still absent.

 

 

Dinner goes as slowly as an unwilling mule pulling weight through a busy morning street. James talks so that Francis can mostly retreat in safe silence, as he prefers it. No angst clutches Francis now that he knows he does not belong here. In this house. At this table. Lady Jane has no doubt spoken with Ross before. Her inquiries are informed. On one topic, however, she insists to have an answer from them.

"My dearest husband--Once he passed, after the attack, you buried his body at sea, below the cover of ice?"

The silence that follows the question is one during which James and Francis attempt to confer together, using only the looks on their faces. Lady Jane holds a satin kerchief to her lip. She has sought the support of Sophia's hand, gripping her niece's fingers tightly.

Francis, as commander of the expedition after Sir John, is, he perceives, the one who must answer this. He does so with a gravity he needs not to feign. "Yes. The men dug a grave in the ice. Land was far and the weather allowed no travel." James approves his lie with a deep nod at Lady Jane.

Funny is it not? How when one lies, Francis thinks, the truth jumps to the forefront of their mind in the most vivid manner? The truth is, Francis remembers close to nothing of this day, the whiskey having done its work. The closest thing he recalls is to have immersed his freezing, near frostbitten toes in warm water upon his return to _Terror_ : liquor had robbed him of every single thing that day, even an experienced Arctic sailor's reflex of stomping his boots.

Beneath Lady Jane's inquiry, as she dabs her eyes, Francis discerns something else. She would have wished for a burial on land, for a tomb from which to retrieve the body and return it to England, he understands. How lucky it is then, that the men had buried Sir John's remnants at sea, fearing that the creature would attack the slow procession of a hundred men escorting a lonely coffin, travelling over the miles of hostile pack ice to King William Island. For it stands, crucial and strong in Francis's soul--the imperative need to keep men, Royal Navy or otherwise, away from these savage lands.

Beside him, James has understood it as well. "Although our pain must not near yours, Lady Jane, you will conceive that Francis and I have suffered greatly from your husband's passing. We lost not only a friend, but a leader," he says, doing his best to keep Lady Jane's mind off the topic of the burial site.

Lady Jane seems ready to pursue her concern. Sophia comes to save them. Still holding her aunt's fingers with a strong grasp, she asks, "Francis, as Commander, you will have given the eulogy for Uncle?"

Francis breathes again. Lady Jane's eyes have turned to shine at the notion. She asks too after the words Francis has spoken about her late husband. In other days, Francis would have scorned the woman, not only for all she took away from him, but also for living now vicariously through her husband's death, as if his pain had been hers. It is plain to him in this moment, that this is the only life Lady Jane has had and that this is the odd shape that love takes in her.

And so he talks of the speech he read for Sir John. How it was Sir John himself who had written it for Graham--which seems to emote Lady Jane all the more.

He had not imagined himself here at all ever.

His own voice, recounting how sorrowful the men were at Sir John's passing, sounds foreign.

It is so strange--all of it.

Sophia's stern gaze on him--the gaze of someone who has cried and is no longer crying.

Lady Jane's kerchief pressed to her cheek. Her voice not bearing a trace of spite when she thanks him.

James picks up Francis's narrative seamlessly when he reaches the burial in the ice. His voice is strong. Not less strong than Francis's. There is trace in it neither of sadness, nor of heroism.

When James finishes, Lady Jane's tears have dried.

Sir John is a hero now. Murdered by a beast in their perilous adventure.

Only as Lady Jane's lets go of her grip on Francis's fingers does he realize she had been holding them.

Glancing up as the maid comes in, venting the taut air of grief with tea, Francis glimpses Sophia's eyes again: they are a mixture of admiration and compassion.

Perhaps he would have taken this for love before, he thinks candidly to himself.

Occupied with the thought, he does not notice as acutely as he should the poignant chill that travels down his spine.

 

 

"Dearest, would you show Captain Fitzjames to the drawing room? Do you remember how your uncle loved the pianoforte? Play us some thing or other, perhaps..."

"It has been months, auntie, since I touched keys..."

"If I may Miss Cracroft," James volunteers. "I knew a song or two in my youth myself. Perhaps your right hand and my left combined could try and recall some melody?"

Sophia appears grateful for the chance at a more diplomatic escape. But her gaze at Francis speaks pointedly of her chagrin--she must have hoped to have a moment alone with him. 

As James and Sophia leave the dining room with Lady Jane's promise that Francis and she would join them presently, Francis's mind is left to brute apprehensions. Would this still be about Sir John? He had filled these rooms with his presence. Now that he has passed, his wife must fill them with words honouring him. He dreads to talk more of their former Commander: the lies roll like pebbles on his tongue.

As he gets up from his seat, he notices the cold now, in earnest. It catches him on his naked cheeks and at the neck, under the silk cravat. It is so strong he is surprised not to see his breath turned to mist as it leaves his lips.

He gestures to Lady Jane to precede him in the drawing room. Instead, she takes his elbow and they begin to march slowly towards the drawing room, which doors at the other end of the dining room seem perilously far now.

"I must thank you both, Francis, and Captain Fitzjames, for your courage and your kindness to two mourning ladies,"

"Your gratitude is precious, Lady Jane. But courage or kindness need no commendation."

"I meant to say, Francis, how happy I am to see you and Captain Fitzjames returned among us."

"So am I," he answers.

"A bright, strong young fellow,  is he not?"

Lord gracious, they have not nearly reached the half of the bewilderingly long dining table.

"He is, indeed." On this he needs not pretend. He means every word. "The bravest man I know. I owe him my life and would trust him with it again."

"Is it so? Tell me, Francis. Is it true he is an orphan?"

Francis stills.

"It is as I heard it, yes."

"The late John Barrow, you see, spoke of him in the kindest of terms."

They are closer to the door now. Hesitant notes from the pianoforte reach Francis's ears. But neither they, nor Lady Jane's swerving conversation can hide the intense cold that seeps into the room.

"So did my late husband," Lady Jane adds. "He trusted him with all the preparations for your expedition. Regarded him like a son, it may be?"

Francis is taken with memories of his own bitterness, now tinged with shame, at the remembrance of his hurried return from Italy to England, to discover who was this Fitzjames beau who had been tasked with furnishing the expedition instead of he. He is so absorbed it takes him a moment to understand he is meant to answer the question.  He nods.

Lady Jane could have spared him her next words. He had dreaded talk of marriage, his own thoughts dutifully avoiding the subject. But never had he fathomed what came next. "He must be engaged, must he not? Such a brave, successful naval officer..."

"Not that I know of," Francis answers, as plainly as he might. The words feel somehow unfit to his throat, as if their shape was not quite right. His mind has emptied.

And what of this bloody cold?

They pass into the drawing room. Lady Jane turns to the pianoforte. James and Sophia are sitting at it side by side on the small bench. Two maids have just arrived to stoke the fire in the hearth opposite, and to revive the lamps. The burst of light brings out the gilding on the epaulets of James's uniform. Sophia holds her left hand tucked behind her back so that they may play together, one hand each to the keys, as one.

How had Sir John put it? Ah yes. _A different banner_. No amount of spirit could ever erase this from Francis's mind.

Lady Jane drifts to one of her servants and Francis is left with himself. He wonders if what he feels is disappointment. Lady Jane's transparent marital projects certainly do not have the sting of Sophia's rebuttals, nor the abysmal despair brought on by Sir John's denial that they would never be as relatives to one another.

Moving away from the fire brings him close to the window. The cold wraps around him fully here. But his thoughts are not in his body. They hover over James and Sophia, playing a song, something German, he thinks. They are reflected in the darkened glass of the windowpanes. He sees them as clearly as with his own eyes and can observe them at his leisure.

James has only now muttered something, in which Francis has discerned the name Jane. Sophia takes her free hand from her back and to her mouth, hiding her smile. At the crease it brings to her eyes, Francis knows it is wide, showing her teeth. Her hair is entirely lovely in this light, Francis thinks.

And it is as he doubted.

No want comes with the thought of Sophia's comeliness, her grace, her joy.

Love remains. He sees her imprisoned here, bound by customs and dues to her adoptive parents. With all his might, he wishes to reveal to her how deeply he understands it. He wishes to bring her joy to attenuate some of it, if he may. He hopes that in his relations with her, he has done this.

In fact, now that doubt dissipates, certitude is deafening.

The only remaining obstacle to his serenity, that keeps him attached to the window, his eyes fixed on James and Sophia, is a curious pang in his chest. More like a knot. If he knew better, he would have said it was jealousy. How could it be? he wonders now. Lady Jane will attempt to commit Sophia in a marriage with James. As he pictures it, none of the sting of jealousy comes.

Envy, then? That James should so easily obtain the status Francis himself could never gain. No. Envy comes with a shade of hate to it. There is no such thing in him now.

Quite the contrary of hate is what the idea of James Fitzjames crafts in his heart.

At the pianoforte, a string of notes flows happily. Francis regards the reflection. Playing has brought blood to Sophia's cheeks. James makes a closing remark to a joke in mischievous bass undertones that Francis's ear grasps from afar. Then Sophia insists they resume as Lady Jane approaches. James glances up, not at the nearing Lady, but at the window. He does it so that his reflection's gaze catches Francis's. A minor shift in James's expression. Not a movement, nor a grin. Peace, trust, love appear all at once. A wink, without the blink of the lid. And just like this the knot comes undone. Only a hitch it was.

Then James breaks their shared look in the reflection, leaving Francis with a quick-beating heart.

Some other shift occur in the reflection, though. It takes Francis a moment to focus anew: the shift was not in the reflection, but beyond the window.

In the nightly inner court.

A few paces away is the ornate glass door opening into the courtyard. Francis goes to it and without further thought, steps outside.

He knows it not to be a man even before his eyes discern the shape.

His mind, preserving its habits of reason by insisting that they are in London, not in the Arctic barrens, thinks it a horse.

No. It is much larger, taller. And once it steps out from the shades of the building into the moonlight, the whiteness of its fur is telling.

The habits of Francis's minds unravel. It was much like he and his men had done on the ice. Only now his mind is quicker to move up the ladder: from _it must be a bear, certainly_ , it goes at once to _an unusually large bear, some natural monster_ , before it changes seamlessly into _lord, it is neither nature nor monster_.

The tuunbaq stares at him with the evenness of focused beasts.

Francis could not voice a word even if he tried.

The creature breathes out, air coming out of its nostrils under the shape of a snowy mist.

"Francis?"

Francis feels as if he were taking root onto the steps. The cold chills him to the bone. The garden vanishes before him and the walls of the house are planted in the shale-covered ground of King William Island. Francis's uniform has left him. The boots on his feet appear worn, coated in pale lime dust--

"Francis?"

James calls to him from the open door.

"Are you alright?"

Francis knows not what to say. The garden has returned, with the earthy smell of the August day and the crisp coolness of the coming night. The creature is gone.

Has never been there, Francis realizes.

He turns to James and nods.

He returns inside. His answer has not convinced James, whose features bear a light frown which is only more earnest that Francis is the sole one to whom it would be visible.

Lady Jane sits with Sophia at the pianoforte now. She stops playing. "James, Francis, would you do me the honour of staying here as guests? You could take room here, for a fortnight, before you find a more permanent home...?"

The only thing that surfaces clearly in Francis's occupied thoughts is a livid and strong _Please no_. He hopes for all he can that it is clear to James in the brief moment when they glance at each other.

James understands to perfection. "Thank you, Lady Jane, for your kindness. I want not to impose. I already have made arrangements for rooms with Mr. Robert Gambier. He has opened last year a house of rooms for sailors, the Royal Sailor Home. He is a relation of mine and, hearing of my return, offered me a lodging." He turns to Francis. "And I am certain Francis must not want to impose himself? Shall I have Robert told you will join me at his home, Francis?"

Francis's gratitude causes the words to tumble from his mouth. "Yes. Yes, please. I would not be such a burden to you both..."

"Well, good. It would be no imposition, naturally. But that men of the sea wish to remain with sailors like them, I understand," Lady Jane says. "Robert Gambier, you say James? Is he a relation of Lord James Gambier, perhaps?"

"His son."

"I see. John and I met Lord James at the Admiralty. I recall seeing his name in the dailies, though. To honour him, no doubt?"

"No. I fear you'll have seen notes of his misfortunes."

"Misfortunes?"

"A financial debacle, over a decade ago now," James says. Francis blinks in recognition of who this Lord Gambier must have been. And of who this Robert Gambier must be. "Robert, however, is as sound as ship oak."

It is nearly an hour still before they can take their leave. As they bid their final greetings in the hall, Sophia asks James in a deliberately low tone, "This home for sailors. Where is it?"

If James is taken about by the question, he shows it not, and tells Sophia the address in similar tones.

 

 

In the coach taking them to this Royal Sailor's Home, Francis asks, his mind still stretched taut over his vision of the creature and the way James's glance at him in the reflection has unknotted his heart, "This Gambier, does he know..." He lets his voice trail off.

"Who I in fact am to him?" James supplies.

Francis nods.

"He does," James assures. His voice is different--deliberate, slow. It is the slowness it has when James speaks of things he has not spoken of to anyone but him, Francis realizes. He must effectively stifle himself from reaching for James's left forearm at his right and hug it in his fingers. He knows not exactly why he would have wanted to do this. Even less why he has stopped himself. "I introduced myself to him a few years ago. I needed not to allude to the subject myself. The Gambier family is aware of--of my father's conduct."

"Hm," Francis says, with as heartfelt a tone as he can produce. He flexes his fingers. Still, he longs for this simple thing: to place his hand on James's arm in comfort. Still, he ignores what stops him.

It is his unnatural vision, which ought to concern him most. Yet his mind has forgotten it entirely.

James clears his throat. Tells Francis of his fortunate meeting with Robert two days ago at the Admiralty. Francis listens, discovering himself to listen not to the words themselves, but to the way in which they sound in James's voice.

And, as his impulse to hold on to James does not stop itching in his right hand, he palms his jacket for his pipe. It is absent.

Francis should have remembered. He has left it at his Admiralty lodging. In the stiff wool of the new uniform, the solid shape of the pipe in his pocket oppressed his chest.

"Here, Francis," James says. He holds out his own pipe, having produced it and his tobacco from his breast pocket. "Have mine."

Francis grasps the pipe from James's hands. In the near-dark of the coach, the inside being only lit punctually by distant street lamps, James must have misjudged Francis's grip or the proximity of his hand. Francis's fingers graze over James's. For a second, their skin brush. They have touched before, not infrequently, and always companionably.

Yet Francis's heart skips. And when it starts again, it beats saliently to Francis's inner ear. Aflutter.

This he knows.

It is want.

The truth uncoils in him. His envy at the reflection of the two players at the piano. It was not envy of James. It was envy of Sophia.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Horatio Nelson lost his arm at the battle of Trafalgar. James Alexander Gordon was a Navy officer. He lost his leg after a cannonball shattered it during the battle of Lissa in 1811. 
> 
> 2\. A Robert Gambier did found a Royal Sailor House, a home for retired sailors, in London in 1848. Whether it was James's brother, cousin, or some other relation, I'm not sure. 
> 
> Next update on November 27.


	7. August and September 1849: James, part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Jonnie for help and betaing! All remaining mistakes are my own.

 

* * *

 

 

"Here, Francis. Have mine."

James is still clutching the bowl when Francis takes hold of the pipe. The contact lasts altogether less than a second. The time it takes for a wing to flutter. James clears his throat softly and in a moment, their touch is undone. His pipe goes away to Francis's side. James digs next in his breast pocket for his tobacco. 

Meeting Francis's eyes, James glances away, out the coach window, at the silhouetted trees of Grosvenor Square. When he gazes at Francis again, he finds him pale. The fault must lie with this horrendous dinner, James thinks. The memory of Sir John everywhere in the halls of the Franklins' house. Lady Jane's grief, sharing its borders with her ambition--for her niece and for the Arctic both. And, worst of all, Francis had not found a moment to speak alone with Miss Cracroft. 

The wheels resound loudly on the pavement. Francis smokes, his fingers shaking, reminding James of the silent, recluse man he was at the start of their voyage. 

They have shared pipes before. Their fingers have touched before, willingly or by accident, handling charts, lines and cables on _Terror_ or _Erebus_ , then harnesses and crates on the ice. But this one fleeting touch has left in James's fingertips an odd, tingling sensation. 

A thing of the mind, it must be. 

"We can now safely say that Lady Jane was not elected by Sir John on account of her subtlety, I take it?" he jests lightly in the heavy silence. 

Francis chuckles once. Some blood returns to his ashen cheeks. He casts a quick look in James's direction, almost shy. 

He says, "Indeed, she was not. Was she... any more specific with you? About her intentions?"

"Not that I could perceive. She did not make the offer in Miss Cracroft's stead."

"I assume that this, she would not dare." Francis puffs at the pipe. "At least not so soon after our return," he adds pensively. "And Sophia," he asks softly, "has she voiced any thought on the matter to you?"

James shakes his head. "But she knows to find us at the Royal Sailor's Home."

Francis hums at that. He is more tense than James has seen him in years. 

Strange things love does to men, James thinks, staring out at the dark facades and illuminated crossings passing by. James's love for Francis has made him light as a wind on a balmy night. Francis's love for Miss Cracroft appears to weigh tons on Francis's shoulders. 

 

 

They reach the Royal Sailor's Home past midnight, weary. Francis especially is haggard, his brow oddly furrowed. His gaze always seems to hover near James, but as soon as James turns, Francis looks away. 

What bears the name of a home for sailors is a house grand enough to be a manor, all dark oak, red brick, white shutters at the windows. The hall inside smells of recent construction: polished wood and tar, paint and oily varnish. It reminds him of a newly outfitted ship--and it differs from it in every possible way. Robert had told him during their chance meeting at White Hall that few rooms were currently occupied. Sailors rarely stay long in one place, James had replied. 

Indeed, a clerk greets them with a yawn and opens a tall, mostly empty ledger. James Fitzjames is an expected guest. Francis Crozier is not, but it takes only a moment for the clerk to fill another line with Francis's name and rank. They arrange for their belongings to be retrieved from their Admiralty lodgings. 

A maid shows them to their rooms upstairs, at the end of a corridor with their doors adjacent.

All the while, Francis keeps his eyes on James as if wanting to ask him some question, or to share some concern. 

Reaching his door, James stops. Francis gazes at him, grave and silent. He waits while the maid comes and goes, lighting a fire in the stove, straightening the covers and placing a jug of water by the basin. When the woman leaves, James expects Francis to finally voice the thought that has been simmering in his mind since they arrived. 

But all Francis says is a soft, "Good night, James." Then the door shuts with a thud.

Uncertainty nagging at him, James enters his own room. The fire has just been stoked. The flames struggle to rise. The window overlooks Rupert street, deserted at this hour. 

He has never felt trapped in the Arctic, when their boats' timbers were crushed, as he feels trapped now between these four walls. He lies awake in bed, under the heavy covers, thoughts coiling in his mind, all of them about Francis. He flexes his left hand hoping to rid it of the tingling. 

On occasions, he can hear Francis in the next room, pacing. Not sleeping either. 

 

 

James wakes at midday. From the closed window comes the distant sound of the Hay Market. He opens it to a burst of light. The air is warm, there is not a cloud in sight. 

All is quiet in Francis's room. Francis must be already up. 

Every morning of the past months, he has woken only a short time after Francis. Francis would dress and wait patiently while James did so. Then they would walk together to the quarter deck of the _Sebastian_ and smoke their pipe. Or, if Francis had risen already, James would join him up on deck. 

Even at their rooms at the Admiralty, they had maintained some version of the ritual. Smoking then having breakfast together. 

None of this today.

Downstairs, James finds that his sea chest as well as the one belonging to Francis have been brought over from their temporary lodgings. 

He inquires after Francis. From the clerk, he learns that "Captain Crozier has gone out early this morning leaving no messages." 

James breakfasts in the vast dining room. Only two of the other tables are occupied by a couple of gentlemen, smoking their pipes, reading the papers. One of them--a Lieutenant--is wearing his undress uniform coat. The other one is in civil attire like James. 

He had craved so long for a heroic life. Now that he does possess it, he finds it is not what he expected. He eats a common breakfast--bread, cured fish, eggs, cream, jam, tea--like most Englishmen do. He wears clothing that renders him entirely indistinguishable from any other British gentleman: a white cravat loose around his neck, emerald velvet for a coat with the right sleeve pinned at the elbow, black trousers and boots. 

Save for his arm and for a wanness that never really subsides, there is no visible trace on his person of their adventurous journey. He and Francis have been across the Atlantic and back, fought creatures they cannot name, witnessed the final extremity of man's nature. 

There is no trace either of the other journey he is embarking on. This one does not take place over waves or shale, but rather through the depths of his own soul. Emotions carry him rather than ships. The harness cutting into his chest drags no sledge, but a weight of sentiments. The landscape of this new adventure is more bland, and in all appearances less hostile than polar ice. The walls are panelled in oak, the chairs upholstered with grey twill. But inwardly, his eyes roam a different country, more unknown to him than the world external. 

He spends the rest of his afternoon reading old correspondence and putting his few possessions in order. Most of his wardrobe he has acquired when returning to London. What is left of his stay in the Arctic does not amount to much: a rusty pistol, pieces of a compass, a comb, a cracked mirror--all of it bearing shadowy traces of limedust. Underneath these, there is the Netsilik parka. Smoothing the fur with the back of his hand, he feels something hard. 

The amulet Francis gave him. Stitched in the fur. 

He can feel it. In the hood. The man with the long coat, and its missing limb and head. Running his hand further down, he discovers another. Not a man. Some kind of vessel. A dismasted ship. 

 

 

Francis reappears only at dinner, in full dress uniform. 

James has no opportunity to ask him about the charms. Francis places an envelope on the table before James. It is addressed to Francis. It has been opened and read. 

James glances up. "From the Admiralty?"

Francis nods. James picks up the letter. 

"Please. Open it," Francis says, unbuttoning his coat, taking a seat. 

James's eyes slide down to the signatures: Barrow the son, Ross the uncle and his nephew. He skims over the lines detailing Francis's bravery, stopping at one phrase. Promotion to the rank of Admiral. 

The letter must have waited for Francis with his sea chest this morning. Francis must have met Ross today at the Admiralty. 

Francis takes a slow sip of water, as if he wished it would be whiskey. 

If James had thought congratulations to be in order, the brittleness on Francis's face would have stopped them on his lips. 

"For years, I waited for this. It is in my reach now. And it appalls me," Francis says with a scoff. 

James swallows, unsure what to do with the letter in his hands. Unsure about everything. 

"I refused," Francis goes on. "Said I would gladly retire and collect my pension."

"And what?"

"James stopped me. Told me to reconsider. Sleep on it. Go to the country for a fortnight." Another scoff. "Even his uncle advised I should wait until my... spirits cooled."

"Did he? You persisted in your refusal I take it?"

Francis gazes at James, his eyes again loaded with unspoken words. Then down at his own hand. Then at the dining room beyond them. Then anywhere it seems but at James himself. 

"I don't know what I have left save for this," he says, slowly. 

 _Me_ , James thinks. _You have me_. _You always will_. The silent pledge has come to him so vividly, he fears for a moment it was voiced against his will. 

"Return to Banbridge?" Francis muses, his attention apparently mesmerized by the fireplace. "To what? My brothers are lawyers and bankers. I am not a banker and certainly not a lawyer."

James's thoughts mirror Francis's. He has yet to receive news of a new posting. He expects a commendation from the Admiralty. Perhaps another medal. He knows not what else he would do than be a naval man. But he knows his views can transform easily. 

"What did you desire for yourself, before joining the Navy?" he asks. 

This does manage to take Francis's attention back to James.  

"I was a boy when I joined. I wanted what boys want: adventure, voyage, exploits. Leave home behind." Francis seems only slightly less despondent, but even so small an alteration delights James. "My father owned farmland--cared not for most of it. I liked the sheep, the cows, the hens. It seemed like an honourable life. Peaceful."

The recollection brings a pleasant tone to Francis's expression. James revels in it. 

He must hide his smile when a young maid arrives. 

"Captains," she says. "For Captain Crozier."

She is holding out a piece of plain, folded paper. A note. James glimpses graceful, light handwriting. Francis reads it quickly, then puts it away in his jacket. He again wears the ashen expression James has seen in the coach on their way back. 

"Sophia," Francis says. 

"Here?" James asks. 

A nod. 

"When?"

Francis checks his watch. "Presently."

 

 

Miss Cracroft comes in as discreetly as one may fathom of a lady coming into a sailors' house. From the dining room, James sees her passing through the hall. Her hair is tucked underneath a dark hat, her face is veiled and her dress has vanished under a vast mantle. No one would know her as Sophia Cracroft. He assumes the coach driver has been paid exceptionally as well. The house holding no parlour, Francis escorts her upstairs to his rooms.

James stays in his seat, his gaze drifting outside, until a servant comes to clear the table. 

He cannot possibly retire, his quarters neighbouring Francis's. Francis had not requested privacy: he did not need to. James picks up his cane. Nelson aches. A steady pulse extending to his invisible right hand. Like one has in their jaw when wisdom teeth come out. As if in a mirror, his intact left hand tingles where it touched Francis still. No matter how he flexes it, it leaves him not.  

"Out we go, boy," he mutters as he puts on his hat. 

Outside, a faint drizzle falls, more like insistent fog than rain. 

He wanders for a long time. First through the closing Hay Market, then south along a busy street. He walks at as quick a pace as he can. The town suffocates him. Cut-stone facades and brick walls with no horizon anywhere in sight. 

What if Francis was commissioned to protect trade routes in the Mediterranean and he sent to India? Crueler still, what if Francis retired into a quiet marriage and home while James pursued his successful naval career? With only rare, polite letters exchanged between them? 

No. James would rather face the tuunbaq again. 

He is at Pall Mall. The rain that does not quite fall, but simply perspires in the air has drenched his coat. He goes east, then turns north on St. Martin's Lane.

What would they do upon their return to England? They had never discussed it. James has told Francis all kinds of stories. From China, from the Euphrates expedition. Every time, James embellished them differently. Francis has told him of his expedition south with Ross, of his polar adventures with Parry. They have talked plenty of closely-avoided disasters. They have never spoken a word of such a mundane thing as their English future. They have never asked one another what they would do in the mornings, if not smoking a pipe together on the deck of some ship. 

"Then it'll just be the two of us, friend, won't it?" he tells Nelson. 

He pauses at the corner of St. Martin's and Newport Street. The stiffness has returned to his legs. The tingle in his left hand is nigh unbearable. He stretches his fingers out to let the rain wet them. It does nothing for the prickling sensation. 

Night falls. A sudden chill has come with it. September is near. 

The route back through Newport Street then Gerrard Street brings him to the south east corner of the Royal Sailor's Home. From where he stands, he can see the building. In fact, it is the very wall where the windows to his and Francis's rooms are. Some part of him knew this when he set out on his way westward to return. The window to his room is dark, of course: not a candle burns there. 

But Francis's window is brightly lit. He can discern a silhouette inside--Miss Cracroft or Francis, he cannot tell from a distance. 

Then in the night's darkness, it is there. 

At this window. In this city. In the flesh.   

If anything, the lamp light in Francis's room seems to burn brighter. James can see clearly.   

The tuunbaq. 

The tuunbaq's face at the window. Inside Francis's rooms. Peering outside. Its huge, monstrous face, with its blue, burning eye. The features of which he has seen up close only once. Just before the strangest dream had happened upon him and landed him on the deck of _Erebus_ on the other side of the Earth. It looks at James.

It is gone in a blink. But James knows what he saw.

He drops his cane and runs. 

 

 

His legs burn with a searing pain and he cares nothing for it. He reaches the corner of the building quickly. The entrance, next. His rushed steps wake the driver asleep on the seat of a coach. Miss Cracroft's coach. 

Inside--nothing, not a sound. How?

James runs up the stairs to the first floor, passing a bewildered clerk who peeks out of his office. 

He knows that the creature cannot really be in Francis's room. Yet he cannot for a moment doubt that it is in fact in Francis's room. His mind pulls wildly at every one of his feelings and thoughts. 

He reaches the door with his fist raised. But Francis opens it first, alarmed by the noise of James running. 

"James! What..."

Behind Francis, the room is empty of any creature. Miss Cracroft has risen from her seat by the fire. She holds a letter in her hand. She seems confounded, if anything, by James's sudden appearance. Examines him as if he was a ghost. There is ground for it, he supposes. His breath falls raspily from his lips, he has lost his hat somewhere on the way; his hair is in disarray, his coat still wet with the rain. 

Francis's hand squeezes his shoulder. "James..."

"The creature," he says. "The tuunbaq. It was here."

Francis looks at James gravely. 

"The creature? Where?" he says. 

"In this room. In this very room," James says. "Returning from my walk, I saw it." 

Miss Cracroft's eyes go from James to Francis. 

She says, "A creature? What creature?"

Francis turns to her. 

James does not hear what he tells Sophia. He is falling. It does not hurt when he hits the ground. 

Somewhere, far above, Francis calls his name. 

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all I have for this update. The past month has been horrendous schedule-wise. I didn't even get to start working on chapter 8 and I had no choice but to split chapter 7 in two parts. ~~The next part will be in the next update, on December 27th.~~ I'm unwell and I have to postpone the next part. Stay tuned for January!


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